Crikey! I'm knitting....

I know, I'm first and foremost a proud sewist and love sewing clothes for myself and here I am...knitting. Knitting!!!!! Well, I'll give you a couple of minutes to get over the shock of it all. Maybe it's the dark nights or something, but there it is.

There is a story behind how all this came to pass. A colleague went on summer holiday to the Faroe Islands and brought me back a ball of wool and a book on Fair Isle knitting. The gauntlet had been flung down! How could I NOT knit something. Also in the summer I went on my first sewing bloggers meet-up in the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh. Some lovely ladies were helping visitors get to grips with knitting and they had some lovely wool cowls. I took one of their cowl patterns and worked myself up to the idea of knitting it. It took a few months!

Gives you an idea how long it is

It's been years since I knitted anything but I thought I'd like the challenge of a mini-project in knitting to take with me when I spent the weekend with my family and was physically parted from my sewing machine and overlocker. Idle hands, and all that!

Lovely golden trees in the communal garden

I bought Rowan Big Wool Colour in Jamboree colourway from John Lewis which has a high wool content, 96% wool and 4% polyamide, just enough man-made content to discourage our 'pet moths'. Hopefully. The knitting needles (10mm) are huge! It didn't take long to knit up the 4 balls of wool but it did take another fortnight to sew in the ends and sew up the one seam to change it from a scarf to a cowl. Then of course, there's finding daylight time to take photos but that's not going to change anytime soon! 

Beautiful carpet of golden fallen leaves

So, to round it all up, I'm very pleased with my new wool cowl and it will go with my new (when I get it finished) forest green jacket. It was lovely and toasty when I was outside taking these photos so that's good to know! What next? Well, I skulked about on Etsy and bought a knitting pattern for gloves/mittens/convertibles (not a type of car, they're fingerless gloves or mittens with a flip top on them). I've just finished knitting the first glove and done some rib on the second. I don't think I'm a knitter at all but I have enjoyed these small projects so far. Maybe I'm a seasonal winter knitter! What about you, do you take up the knitting needles in autumn and lay them down in spring?
 

And such a blue sky

Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge top

Taa dah!!! This is the third garment I said I'd sew for my Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge 2015. My pledge was for 3 garments so I'm ahead of time, yay! There could be another one simmering away in the darkest recesses of my brain but that's a place we don't really want to go!

The fabric is totally man-made. No natural fibres here. At. All. The pattern is Butterick 6693 (links to an Etsy listing so when someone buys it, it's gone). There isn't any copyright year printed on this sewing pattern but it looks more likely to be from the second half of the eighties as the pattern envelope artwork looks quite stylish and tasteful. Not something you often find yourself saying about the early eighties!

I made view A. It's a round necked top with off the shoulder sleeve seams. Because of that quite high up neckline I even muslined the pattern! Then there is a front wrap and a back wrap which tie at the side. I added 2" to the body length but that's it for any alterations and I left the neckline alone.

The front and back overwraps all combine to make this quite a heavy top. Surprisingly heavy! It's definitely an autumn top rather than a summer one so it's also an ideal candidate for the Fall Essentials Sew-Along. As you can see I've cunningly accessorised my autumn top with autumnal trees and carefully arranged the fallen leaves in the background. We haven't had a puff of wind or more to the point, downright gale force winds that characterise Edinburgh from October onwards. It was a bit chilly taking these photos though.

This pattern was a little challenging, more challenging than it looks. There's quite a lot going on at the neckline with a complicated facing to sew and a button closure. If I make this again I'll just make the neckline larger so I can do away with this complication. The sleeves were also a bit 'Aaarrrghhh!' to sew. You have to sew up the side seam to the arm. Sew the arm seam and then do a kind-of set in sleeve. Except it's not that easy and involves clipping the body seam allowances to the point where the body stitching ends. There must be another way to do that better and if I make it again, I will modify the arm/sleeve thing. And yes, I think I will make it again in the future.

So, what do I remember from the late-eighties? I was at art college and studying away as you have to with these things. My musical taste veered away from the Top Twenty etc and our art college discos every Friday night played a hefty wallop of soul music - I was introduced and grew to love James Brown  Louis Jordan , The Mohawks The Jackson 5 and even this from Louis Prima ...it was all about the beat (man!), if it had a good beat, we'd dance to it!

I seem to have 'discovered' 1980s vintage patterns! What's that all about? I've really surprised myself with this and if anyone had asked me at the start of the year I'd have said 'No chance' to 1980s clothing and patterns but I seem to be drawn to the bat-wing sleeves and unusual styles. I quite like 1950s clothing but I'm not really a dresses person, as you've probably gathered by the rest of my blog. I've really enjoyed the Vintage Sewing Pattern Pledge and I'll be looking out for more vintage patterns from now on...and here's a quick 'flash' of the wraps unwrapped!