Merry Christmas: Santorini tank; dressform, pillowcase, socks

Merry Christmas everyone!

I have been mostly knitting this week while watching Sewing Bee and Bake-off shows to pass the time! I am VERY HAPPY with my work-socks. Don't want to give them away!

mini hat ornament

I knit up a couple of hat ornaments, too, which are cute! (Thanks to a Pattern Review friend, kidnotes for sharing that pattern.)

ALthough I am happy with the work-socks, I DO have a bit of a bone to pick with the pattern. I used a pattern by Briggs & Little, a Canadian yarn company based in New Brunswick. It was a perfect pattern for the worksocks, with just some modifications for colour choice. However, the instrutions to shape the toe are either very bizarre or wrong.

All of the toe -shaping (and the hand in mittens) I have knit have certain elements in common:

work socks

• a regular decrease at the 'sides' of the foot or hand.
• alternating between knit1/knit 2 together, and some version of knit 1, slip 1, knit 1, pass one stitch over, in order to slant the stitches pleasingly towards the side, as opposed to oddly slanted. (hard to explain.)

This pattern has you decrease, always in the same manner (K2tog), without the "knit one" as the first and final stitches, and at the beginning and end of EACH needle, which means that you get a decrase up the middle of the sole of the foot. This just seemed wrong on so many levels, and I phoned the company to ask about it.

The person I spoke to seemed to agree that it seemed odd, but said that it was a long-standing pattern, and nobody had ever said anything in be past. 

SOO, if you have knit these socks and used the printed toe-shaping with success, I would be pleased to know. If you are knitting it and feeling a bit perplexed, here is how I modified it for the Adult men's size. The same method could be adapted for the other sizes.

TO SHAPE TOE:

• redistribute stitches so that you have 34 stitches on 'top' needle, and 16 each on 'bottom" needles; your 'first' needle should be the one after the 'top' needle.
• 1st round
• 1st needle: k1, sl 1, k1, psso, knit to end.
• 2nd needle: knit to last three stitches, k2tog, k1
• 3rd needle: k1, sl 1, k1, psso, knit to three stitches, k2tog, k1
• 2nd round
• knit all stitches
• repeat rounds 1 & 2 for a total of 12 rounds.  You will need to decrease on the 'top' needle on ond of the knit rounds, in order to even out the number of stitches.
• continue as for 1st round until a total of 16 stitches remain
• cast off using your preferred method (I use this method by Knitting with Suzanne Bryan)

I have also been doing some sewing, as I recuperate from surgery.

The Sew Festive Santorini top is done, and I am very pleased! 

I sewed this up slowly, and very carefully. I used the emerald silk to flatline (underlining/edge binding combined.) For me, this process can be a crap-shoot. I am still trying to fix the problems I had with this in the grey skirt I made last year. What you do is you cut the underlining 5/8 inch bigger than the pattern piece on each vertical edge. Then you sew those edges right sides together matching up the edges. Then you turn the right sides out, and you wrap the underlining AROUND the end of the main garment. If you cut it too small it pulls at the main garment, and if it is too wide it will just be baggy. Mine worked! 😁

flatlined

buttonholes

  

With this fabric, the next challenge was to line up the plaid at the seams. This is dependent on having cut it out correctly, but still can be tricky. You see, when you are sewing, the top layer of fabric can be pushed at a different speed from the bottom piece, which can cause a misalignment. People often use walking feet when sewing plaid, but I don't like the walking foot on my Juki. I find it extra challenging to line up patterns on an angled edge (like the princess seams, especially the front ones which have more differential for the bust.)

So I pinned the seams, then hand basted, and THEN sewed. I put it on the dressform, admired it, went to be pleased. Funny how the light of day can highlight some faults! So I unstitched sections in order to line them up better. The end result is not perfect, but is very satisfactory!

Sewing the facing, using a burrito method, is not difficult, but again, if you have not cut very carefully and lined up the edges exactly, you risk having the facing too big, and thus rolling over to the right side. And since I was using a different colour fabric (electric blue) for the facing I really could not afford for it to show! I really love the burrito method. And it worked.

fancy topstitching

In preparing the facings I used this cool technique (that I have probably mentioned before), of sewing the facing to the interfacing right sides together along the edge that needs to be 'finished' at 1/4 inch. Then you fold them wrong sides together and press it, fusing the interfacing if it is fusible. This pulls that raw edge in without fussing with a tiny hem. I am not very trusting of the longevity of the fuse, so I topstitch that clean edge. This time I decided to use one of my fancy stitches. Sure, it is on the inside, but so cute!

I wore this at Christmas dinner, but wore a sloppy black cardigan over top to keep my arms warm! I guess this would be better for a Down-under Christmas outfit! 🤣

silk pillowcae

I also finished this unusual pillow case for my sister, using the remaining silk from the summer birthday pillow cases. Her pillow is in the shape of an arc, and has a 'tunnel' where she can place her ear so that there is no pressure. She traced the original pillow case, and I made up a muslin, and then requested that she come over with the pillow for a fitting.😄

Well, she did a perfect job tracing, because the muslin fit perfectly. Sewing the gusset for the tunnel presented a bit of a puzzle, but I figured out the circumference of the circule, added the seam allowance, and cut out a rectangle (the base was the circumference, and the height was the diameter of the hole plus seam allowances). I traced the sewing line on the fabric, traced a cutting line. I sewed the rectangle into a cylinder, then sewed it on the sewing line, clipping into the seam allowance as needed. Then sewed the other long edge closed. I did a pretty good job, if you ask me!

buttonholer

BUT, what? a button?? Now I had to sew a buttonhole into the bottom of that gusset. 

Singer buttonholer attachment to the rescue!!! There was no way my automatic buttonholer on the Juki was going to be able to manage that mess of fabric folds. But whereas the auto buttonholer moves above the fabric, risking getting the foot caught up in misplaced bumps and folds, the attachment moves the entire piece of fabric, so that once it is in place it is all set. And what a beautiful buttonhole it made!

close up of gusset

I have also finished the dress form.

 

The stand has created some puzzles that we worked out. I got the coat rack for free some somebody's garbage. I had a thick sturdy cardboard tube from the fabric store. Which turned out to be too wide. We had some PVC piping in the garage, but it was not going to fit onto the coat stand... We figured something out, but then there is a connector on the PVC pipe that is too wide for the internal sleeve of the dressform....  however, we did figure it out!

Stuffing the dress form is a bit of a challenge; you have to stuff it firmly (it takes LOTS of stuffing), and also measure to make sure you don't over- or under- stuff it. I used fill from a discarded pillow (which needed to be cut apart and was tough work), and fabric scraps, which also needed to be cut down - using the rotary cutter. Also lots of work!

 

In the end, I am not sure how accurate it is. I think it looks a bit lopsided, and it was hard to distribute the stuffing accurately without the model here! However, it will be an extra tool when I try to make clothes from a distance!

poly-fill from pillow

SOME of the fabric scraps