The ladybird skater

I've enjoyed my first year with my sewing machine, and I still can't believe that I have been able to make dresses that I wear and love. But, like most people, the bulk of my clothes are made with knit, not woven, fabrics. Which meant that, if I wanted to make clothes that I love wearing, I had to attempt sewing with knits.

At the time I didn't realize that being scared of knit fabrics was a thing, but given my general haphazard approach in life and craft, I thought it might be worth taking a class - Craftsy's Sewing with Knits gave me an awesome hoodie dress (that makes me look like I am ready for a pagan ritual of some sort). Since then, I have made three version's of Tilly's Coco tunic dress, some more successful than others. What has really been confusing is the actual fabrics rather than how to sew with them. I just wanted basic t-shirt-style fabric, but because I tend to buy them online, I never seem to get what I am after.

My first attempt was with a Ponte Roma from Plush Addict (that's the grey one), which was thicker and a bit shinier than what I wanted. The next one was jersey from Minerva Crafts (the stripey one), which was perfect - jersey, I concluded, is what I want to be buying. But then the jersey I ordered from myfabrics was much stretchier, a bit like leggings fabric, and not the nicest for a dress (the patterned one). I decided to give it another go and ordered interlock from Tissu, and once again, success (and insanely cheap)! So at this point, and despite reading a sewing book on knits and sewing advice on the internet, I am still confused about the perfect knit, t-shirt-style fabric.

Anyway, here is what I made with my interlock fabric - the ladybird skater dress. The Lady Skater dress is quite a popular one among sewing bloggers, and I can see why, I absolutely love it! It is a good fit (although a tiny bit of sag around the back), with a lovely full skirt and nice finishing around the collar and sleeves; I much prefer the neckline finish of the Lady Skater to the Coco (sorry Tilly!).

I got a little bit confused about what size to cut, as the pattern only notes the bust and waist size, but not the hips, where I normally grade up. I tried to work it out myself and decided to cut a size 2 for the top and a 3 for the skirt. In hindsight, a 2 throughout would have been fine, and I got a response from the designer, who told me that the skirt is full enough to not need grading.

Of course, this wasn't completely problem-free. The dress requires adding some clear elastic to the shoulders and waist, and this seemed to constantly be breaking my thread, which was pretty irritating. I wasn't using good polyester thread (I forgot to buy red thread and just used the thread that came with my sewing box), which might partially explain this. I also managed to break my needle at some point (!), but thankfully I have a full pack of them. I did buy a twin needle to hem the skirt and sleeves, but after the needle-breaking incident, I was a bit too scarred to use it, perhaps next time!

Castle pullover, and the importance of carefully reading instructions

I decided to go through my graveyard of dead projects and make something that I'm actually going to finish and wear. That meant goodbye to the Baby Corn dress from last summer and hello to the Castle Pullover.

I was basically after a knitted top that I could wear alone like the Petrie shell or with a layer underneath, and one that would be interesting enough to knit to make sure I'd finish it (so not too much stockinette!). The Castle Pullover is meant to be a jumper of sorts, made in wool, but I don't know that many people who would opt to wear a wool t-shirt. A bamboo-cotton t-shirt though seems far more appealing.

This is a top-down construction with raglan sleeves, which has the added benefit of allowing you to try it on as you go along, made mostly in lace. It uses a long-tail cast-on, which was a revelation to me and I think my favourite cast-on method so far.

I decided to be sensible for a change and read through the whole pattern to make sure I understood it before starting, I even circled my size throughout to avoid confusion. And yet somehow I missed a very crucial bit of the instructions, which meant that after the endless increases during the raglan shaping, I realised I didn't have anywhere near as many stitches as I was supposed to. It was hit and miss at that point, and if I hadn't paid for the pattern, I may have given up rather that start all over again.

But I persevered, got to the fun bit, aka the lace, got a little frustrated with the fun bit when I started making mistakes and decided to stop 'living on the edge', as my friend put it, and use a life line for each lace repeat. It certainly helped when I started counting out 9 stitches for each pattern repeat, as suggested by another raveller.

Its cute, its cozy because of the bamboo, and, surprisingly, the fit is fine even though I used 4mm needles with a DK yarn rather than the suggested 4.5mm needles with a worsted yarn - I guess this was a little stretchy. There are a couple of mistakes I know I made in the lace, but thankfully they are not at all noticeable.

But there's one major flaw that makes me very very unhappy. I have no idea how this happened but my raglan lines are in completely the wrong place: one is on the sleeve, where it's supposed to be, and the other is in the middle of the top! I am soooo annoyed about this and especially about not noticing earlier.

I don't know if anyone else would notice, especially because if I strategically shift it (as in the photo above) the line can somehow be in the middle rather than running diagonally across the chest. But it sort of spoils it for me, hopefully I can look past it and enjoy the cozy top despite its flaws! 

Starry Crepe (the wearable kind)

I have spent the past month trying to decide what to sew next - this is turning into a serious obsession! I seem to be possessed with the idea that I have to make all of my own clothes, at least the fun things like dresses, as I get some much pleasure out of wearing my handmades. And yes, I have been knitting as well, its just that knitting progress is quite a bit slower.

The winner of my endless browsing of sewing patters was the Colette Crepe, a wrap dress that had the benefit of no zips or other closures, and the benefit of pockets, pockets! I bought the pdf pattern because of the instant gratification but also because of the bonus of having a digital copy of the pattern in case I cut the wrong size, tear it, whatever. It seemed like a good idea at the time anyway. Not so much while I was sellotaping together 58 pages of pattern. I think it took me about 2 hours (!), and I'm pretty sure I went a bit crazy (but didn't learn, I have since bought another pdf pattern, but at least that one is only 22 pages).

While I was researching the dress I saw that there had been a sew-along on a popular sewing blog, with tips on sewing, fitting etc, and I had all the best intentions to read through it, but I didn't. I also didn't try and fit it on a muslin/toile first either. I just can't deal with the extra effort yet, as I said before, I see the first copy of the dress as a wearable muslin that I can learn from and improve on next time.

Anyway, enough talking. Here's the dress. I had to combine a size 2 for the top and a size 8 for the bottom, which seems crazy but the sizes are actually very close together.

And, surprise, surprise, it's a little big. I mean, its a wrap dress so its not especially noticeable, and I probably wouldn't have expected a better fit from a store-bought dress, but if I don't tie it tight enough around my waist, the back sags a bit. So I am tempted to cute the bodice in a size 0 next time and maybe decrease the skirt one size as well, its quite a full skirt so it can probably handle it.

Even so, its really cute, especially with this fabric. I really like the back when its not saggy and I think its a much better way to do a wrap dress (the ones that wrap in the front always seem a little frumpy to me).  I also loooove the pockets, its so great being able to carry stuff around without a bag or even to simply rest my hands in them. I hadn't really understood how the whole thing would come together while I was sewing it, so one of the pockets is inside-out, oops! But its so simple, I think I could add similar pockets to other dresses as well quite easily now.