James' Shirt

I've never been a massive fan of denim, but there's something about it.  I like the way it presses and how the stitches look when they are holding pieces of it together.  There's something very satisfying about creating garments out of it.  So when I was asked to make a shirt I was quite excited to get going on it.


The fabric itself is quite thin, for denim, however as it's a shirt and not a jacket this was important.  I chose the lightest weight I could find knowing that the yoke and the pockets would all weigh it down.


Here is the result :-)

Dad's Photographers Gloves

Prompted by something my dad had mentioned, I decided to go on and make him some gloves for christmas with a couple of bits missing... He'd said how gloves should have the tip of the right finger free, for pressing the shutter on the camera.  Thinking about this, I realised how generally it's quite useful to have a thumb free also, but without all of the missing fingers of fingerless gloves which frankly don't keep you warm in the winter!  (Yes I realise it's now March, but I've been terrible at keeping this blog up to date recently (possibly something to do with the excitement of moving from the south east back to the south west. ))


I digress..

Here are the gloves.. now tried and tested, they proved very useful! The pattern for the gloves can now be downloaded from here.

Ebay

Hola! So I've been away from the blog for ages again, mostly making christmas presents and all those aprons last year, but my excuse this time is the shop I have been setting up on ebay. I thought I'd have a go with these fun skull and crossbones/rockabilly type fabrics and see what I came up with.

Here's a baby dress to give you an idea of the sort of things I want to do - you'll have to excuse the rubbish photo I was in a bit of a hurry to get it all listed yesterday so it won't be permanant!

Check out my ebay shop here

Aprons.. lots and lots of them!

I realise I haven't posted anything for ages again - but I have a good excuse! I've not had a lot of time to myself recently as I've been crazily preparing for Christmas, making these lovely aprons which I will (hopefully) be selling at the Craft Fayre at the Komedia on Sunday in Brighton.

If you'd like one then they will be available in the shop soon, or if you can't wait then email me and I'll send you one. These aprons are reversible and made from cotton and viscose suiting fabric, so as well as looking stylish they are also fully washable (on a low temperature) so you don't need to worry about getting covered in cake, or steak, or whatever floats your boat.

I thought after all the cute girly aprons that I'd make something for the boys too, so these are available at £25 each.

Black with White Stripe with grey/white stripe:

Black with white stripe / Mottled black and white

Brown/Blue tweed stripe / mottled black/white:

Brown/blue tweed stripe / Grey/white stripe:

And more for the ladies! I've now got this lovely apples and flowers fabric with hot pink polk dot, cupcakes with chocolate and turquoise and a little tailored skirt apron made with the black and white stripe fabric and the grey and white material.

Tommy's Booties

These booties were made for a small person called Tommy.... They were knitted in Rowan Handknit Cotton and Rico Baby DK and the pattern can be found here

The buttons are made of coconuts :-)

Broad Street Mittens part 2

Gosh, I just realised I last blogged about these in January too, what have I been doing? I suppose the need to knit gloves in the summer isn't great really. Now finished, the mittens are no longer mittens, but proper gloves, and they fit and are soooo warm! I'll be glad of this in the winter.



I decided to keep going with the fingers as fingerless gloves are never really warm enough for me, even with the mitten flap. But having finished them I remember the reason I wanted fingerless ones was so I could knit in the winter so maybe I'll have to make another pair.



The yarn is a regia 4ply nylon/wool mix and the pattern is from knitty and can be found here I have changed the size (as I have small hands) so if you use this yarn I can't guarantee they'll fit you!

Emma's bridesmaid dress.

I made this dress for my friend Emma in September for a wedding. She was a bridesmaid and had just been told to buy a burgundy dress and that was it. I really wanted a bit of practice at making something for someone else, so I offered to make it for her as an excuse :-)

I did have more photos of this dress but I seem to have lost a memory card! The fabric and lining are both silk and it took about a week to complete.



It's actually the same pattern as one I made for myself (as a brithday present) Emma and I are a similar size so I was lucky that I could try it on when she wasn't around.

The pattern is Burda 7488 for anyone wishing to make one, I just omitted the contrast fabric from the bottom and instead used one piece.

Mat's Hat

Hello again! I've been a tad behind with the blogging due to an increased addiction to making, it seems. So here is the first of a few long overdue posts and photographs..

Back in January I agreed to make a hat for Matt Carver, a local electrician, with his business logo on it. Here is the original post. The logo for Lucas Electrics is a kangaroo and I was looking forward to getting stuck into a bit of fair isle knitting. This isn't something I'm massively accomplished at and I really wanted to give it a go.

However it didn't really work in the round, as I realised I'd be using up far too much wool carrying the yarn around when I wasn't using it, and it would make the hat unnecessarily thick. Also I was messing up the tension and spending far too long on it!

In the end I settled for knitting the beanie in the round and then swiss darning the logo on afterwards. This gave a lot more scope for detail and the end result I think is great. I haven't got a photo of Mat in it yet but he does seem to wear it a lot, which can only be a good thing! It's also 100% Merino so it should keep him warm in the winter months.

It also managed to grab the attention of Aussie comedian Adam Hills and played a part in his show! He mentions it in his blog here

Aprons

I thought I'd try my hand at making a few cute aprons for Etsy and Christmas markets. Here's the first one :-)

Chris's Shirt

I've been wanting to write about this one for a while but I've had to wait until I gave it to a certain someone for his birthday before I could make it public!

I loved making this shirt, the fabric is beautiful and it felt like a proper challenge to get all the checks to match up. I changed a few of the design features - omitted the pocket flaps after deciding the fabric was too heavy for them, changed the shape of the front yokes and added small darts from the pocket down for extra shaping.

Making this has made me seriously think about going into menswear as it was so nice to put together. I've taken an order for one more in plain fabric, which should be a lot quicker, so watch this space :-)

It fitted it's recipient perfectly (phew!) though I still need to get a photo of him in it to prove this (when he'll let me..)

"Childhood" cardigan by Natalie Wilson

I just realised I never wrote anything about this when I made it, and it's so lovely it deserves a mention!

I made this for baby Charlie (who is now 2) out of Rowan Soft Baby Yarn. It served him well for about a year and will hopefully be passed down to the next one! :-)

The pattern is from knitty and can be found here and sizes go up to age 6.

4ply Beanie Hat

As the weather started to warm up a bit I went decided that what I really needed on Brighton beach one evening was a new hat, not of the huge chunky variety I made over the winter, but something I could scrunch up in my bag and have handy in case it got chilly. Being one that feels the cold easily (and how boring my knitting habit would be if I didn't) a warm but thin hat was calling my needles to get twitching.

And so this was born - a 4 ply hat made with Regia sock wool and a few random remnants, it took a few attempts to get the size right but now it's just right. It's unfortunately a tad too warm to wear it now though!

Rowan "Lichen" Aran

There's nothing like a few long train journeys down to Devon to get on with a lot of knitting! Finally, after what must be about 8 or 9 months (on and off) I've finished my new cardigan. This one was a chore so I'll admit there were a few breaks, but once I got stuck in again I found I couldn't motivate myself to do much else!
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