Vikki Makes Things

Hello there Autumn! For the past few weeks, there have been hints of autumn starting to crop up: the odd leaf on the floor, an occasional cooler morning, the evenings drawing in, the kids finally returning to school after many months off. Unfortunately, this year, those signs of autumn have brought with them an increase in cases of Covid, so our region has just gone into a local lockdown. Since the kids had gone back to school, I had been getting used to being able to see friends again, and spending days at the park enjoying the last of the summer's sunshine. The next few weeks promise more time at home again, but with the kids still in school (for the time being at least), which has me somewhat optimistic about the possibility of additional crafting, sewing and baking time!

I seem to have amassed quite a pile of sewing materials over the past few months and years, and I would love to be able to turn all of it into wearable items: last week I stitched a dress for me! I genuinely can't remember the last time I did that. I remembered to make the length adjustments as I went, and the fit is pretty good, so the dress is definitely wearable, which has filled me with a renewed enthusiasm for dressmaking.

Cooler, darker evenings always inspire me to return to the kitchen - there's something so welcoming about filling the house with the aromas of baking, and the kids are always enthusiastic to sample my baked goodies. Great British Bake Off also returns to our screens next week, which never fails to fill me a desire to try out new recipes.

Last year I loved knitting my way through a yarn advent calendar, adding a square to my mitred square blanket every day in the run up to Christmas, and I'm hoping that I might get the blanket out early this year and start adding squares using the leftovers from all the socks I've knitted over the past year or so. The mitred square blanket has got to a scale now where I can't work on it during the warmer months as I have to sit under it to add extra squares!

The past couple of years have seen me add a few knitted garments to my wardrobe - my Lush by Tin Can Knits that I knitted last summer is pefect over a dress with tights and boots, and the Love Note I knitted this summer is similarly versatile. I also have a Pavement sweater that I knitted three years ago that pairs well with jeans and is good for layering. All these knits have given me confidence to keep on knitting garments, so last weekend I cast on a Chuck sweater that I want to have finished by the end of October - it will be a welcome addition to my wardrobe as it is winter-weight without being festive! I own several Christmas jumpers, which get heavy wear in December, then put away for the following 11 months, leaving a gap in my wardrobe in January and February when jumpers are much needed.

Of course, all of these things are projects that I am enthusiastic about, but that definitely can't be defined as 'work', and this is the blog for my business, Vikki Bird Designs. I still want to share all of these makes with you all, but to keep them separate, so this weekend, I finally set up an Instagram account for all my non-work makes: vikkimakesthings In all likelihood, there will be a good mix of baking, sewing, knitting and crochet, plus some other things I haven't thought of yet. If you fancy following, you'd be very welcome.

 

Sunday stitching: tea towel project bags

For several weeks, every time I walked past the window of our local Asda a particular tea towel in their window display caught my eye. Eventually I caved and popped in to buy these three beautiful tea towels. I'm not massively excited about housework, but I knew that these tea towels would make beautiful project bags!

A couple of weeks ago I finally spent a Sunday afternoon turning them into bags.

First up, the seaside towels. I decided that I wanted to use the whole design, so unpicked the hems before washing the tea towels ready for sewing. I cut lining the same size as the tea towels, then stitched them into a lined drawstring bag with mitred corners. The bag is huge! I put two 200 g cakes of yarn in the bottom, and they pretty much swam. This is very much a decorative storage bag rather than anything very practical (I also added a pocket on the inside, but it's not very useful as it's too deep and goes into the mitred base. If I make another I'm going to have to rethink the pocket design, and I might go as far as to sew up the pocket on this bag).

The watermelon bag was a much quicker project. I folded the tea towel in half end to end and trimmed the edges off before seaming the sides of the bag (I used French seams to enclose the raw edges). I kept the hemmed edges at the top and bottom of the tea towel to form the bottom of the drawstring casing, which made life easy. The bottom has internal mitred corners, which are loose, but don't seem to get in the way. I love this little bag; it's just the right size for a pair of socks, and is so lovely and cheerful.

Have you done any sewing recently? What's your favourite thing to sew?

FO: The raspberry dress

This weekend, amid the chaos of several birthday parties, I decided that what I really wanted to do was sew a dress for my daughter. This has been on my to-do list for ages, and a few weeks ago I found a tutorial (in a sewing magazine) for turning a t-shirt into a dress (by adding a fabric skirt), so decided that was what I was going to do.

Yesterday afternoon I set to work, and started reading the tutorial, only to find that it was almost entirely useless: the only measurement given was that the skirt fabric should be four times the waist measurement, and there was no indication of whether that was the width across the waist, or around the waist, and nothing at all about how long the skirt should be. At which point I went upstairs to find one of my daughter's dresses in the right style and decided to make it up as I went along.

The dress I was working from had pockets, and as I love having pockets in all my clothing I decided to stretch myself and draft some pockets. I had a roll of pattern paper to hand, which made the job a lot easier, but I essentially took the measurements from the dress I had to hand and transferred them to the paper, and quite quickly had a template for the front and back of the skirt and some pockets, and got to work cutting the fabric.

The fabric I chose to use was super-cheap - an IKEA duvet cover that was in the sale a couple of years ago - and features a busy raspberry-print, which works any way up, avoiding the need for pattern-matching. I decided to use French seams (which are enclosed - I don't have an overlocker, and hate finishing seams, so this is my preferred method), and quite quickly managed to create the pockets and attach them to the skirt front (although I did have a moment of panic when I pressed one pocket inside out, so it didn't fit at all!). Seaming the front and back of the skirt together once the pockets were in place was easy (I stitched the tops and sides of the pockets in place on the overlap with the skirt front to stop them moving around), and only took a few minutes.

The challenge started when I had to attach the skirt to the top. The skirt is made of non-stretchy fabric and the t-shirt is jersey (which stretches), and is not something I have worked with before. My sewing machine is pretty basic, and doesn't have an overlocking stitch, so I used a zig-zag stitch (to allow the stitching to move with the t-shirt as it's worn), and after gathering and pinning the skirt, I managed to sew the t-shirt on inside out, then spent the rest of the evening unpicking and repinning (I used a lot more pins the second time round to stop the gathers shifting). Oops.

This morning I was up bright and early, so quickly stitched the skirt and t-shirt together, and hemmed the skirt, then managed to convince my daughter to wear it (she initially said she wanted to wear it tomorrow, which usually means she isn't keen on something). And I think she likes it. She certainly likes the pockets - they are perfect for collecting clover flowers, which our garden is full of at the minute!

The dress is not perfect. There is a bit of a wobble at the back in the seam joining the top and bottom of the dress, and the gathers could be more even. Also, the zig-zag stitch isn't doing very well at supporting the weight of the skirt, so I might go over the stitching with a straight stretch stitch when she takes it off at bedtime. But it's certainly not a bad first attempt. And now I have the pattern pieces, I foresee a few more dresses appearing in the future! I also want to make something for myself - maybe a skirt with pockets now I know how to do them.

Yarning Along: The final wedge

This weekend I tried my hardest not to knit so that I could give my hands a bit of a rest. I managed a whole 48 hours without knitting, and haven't done as much as usual this week either, and my hands are thankful for that. Not knitting meant I had time to get the sewing machine out, and while I didn't manage to complete the two projects I had wanted to do, I did finally finish the curtains for my daughter's room, which I bought the fabric for in October and cut out in March. That project had been pushed up to the top of the to do list as the mornings have been getting lighter and I was getting bored of having to unpeg the blackout linings every morning... The curtains do still need hemming, but I'm pretending I need to leave them to relax for a few days to stabilise at their natural length before I do them (in truth curtain seams are long and by the time I had done them I was bored!).

I've been focusing on knitting for me now that all my commissions are out of the way, and my current favourite is my Dotted Rays. I have just started the final shade of purple and am on the final wedge, so this is nearly done (does anyone else speed up as they get towards the end of a project?). The project isn't very photogenic at the minute as it's all bunched up on the needle, but that can't be helped.

I finished reading After You this week, and while I enjoyed it I much preferred Me Before You. And I have made no progress on Spectacles this week, but know I will enjoy it when I next have an early night. The other non-knitting thing I am excited about this week is the arrival of my La La Land DVD, which was a birthday present (but hadn't been released in time for my birthday); I loved seeing it at the cinema and can't wait to watch it this weekend (and then several times afterwards - the cd of the soundtrack is in my car on repeat).

Linking up with Rachel for Yarning Along.

Planning for a little me time

The past month has featured quite a lot of secret deadline knitting, and finally an end is in sight, which can only be a good thing as I have a bit of an ache in my thumb and a puncture wound on my right index finger. And I am looking forward to a couple of days that feature no knitting at all to give my hands a rest.

I do have crafting plans afoot, with some sewing on the horizon, including a dress for me (New Look 6262 in some swallow print chambray) and finishing a baby dress for a friend's toddler (a WIP that I started in January. Ought to get a move on or the small person will be rather too large for it...).

But for now it's back to the needles. Do you ever find you need to switch crafts for a day or two? Which crafts do you turn to?

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I'm blogging every day in May. If you fancy reading all the posts, you can find them here.

World Craft Week 2017: Sewing

This week, for World Craft Week, I'm having a look at the crafts I have done over the years. Today it's sewing.

When I was little my mum had a sewing machine in one of our main living rooms, housed in its own special work table. The sewing machine collapsed into the table and the workspace folded over to take up less space when it wasn't being used. I assumed this was normal and am very disappointed that my living arrangements do not have enough space for such a thing - my sewing machine is kept in a sewing machine bag in a corner of the living room and if I want to sew I have to clear the dining table, and as a consequence I don't do very much sewing!

I learnt to use a sewing machine when I was very young. My mum was always happy to let me play with her scraps and I was constantly improvising bags for me and clothes for my toys. Over the years I learnt to do appliqué, which I loved, quilting, which I didn't love and eventually moved on to making garments for myself.

Applique curtains for my son

I'm pretty tall (5 foot 10) and one of the joys of making things for yourself is that you can adjust the proportions so that the item actually fits! I made evening dresses to wear for my prom and balls at university, and several day dresses; I made my bridesmaids dresses and even considered making my own wedding dress (until I realised quite how long that would take!). These days my sewing is limited to curtains and project bags, although I do have plans to sew a summer dress for myself this year. As soon as I had children finding the floor space for pattern and fabric cutting became a bit of a battle and I still haven't found a solution to that, but when I do (probably when my children are bigger) I will spend a lot more time sewing.

Project bags in quirky fabrics

Do you like to sew? Do you have a solution to my lack of cutting space?

The Single-Minded Sock Knitter

This week hasn't totally gone to plan so far. After the glorious sunshine and warmth of the weekend, the past two days have been cold! I had planned to do a photoshoot for my Barley Twist cardigan yesterday, but the day started foggy, so I made other plans for the day, and once the sun did come out I couldn't quite summon up the energy to drive across town to the place I was planning to take the photos. It will happen this week, just not when planned...

I had hoped that the clock change at the weekend would have solved the sleep issue we're currently having (namely a certain two year old having an internal body clock whose alarm rings at 6.20), and yesterday it worked: we got up at 7.20 (hooray!), and it felt totally ok to go to bed a little after 10, which was perfect. And then this morning my daughter wandered through at 6.20 and suggested that it might be time to get up. I have no idea how she's managed to change her body clock at the same time as the actual clocks; I shall continue to be bleary eyed for the foreseeable future. I did cut out some new curtains for her room at the weekend. Hopefully when I have stitched and hung them I will get a little more sleep. I can hope.

Things have been going well on the knitting front though. Yesterday morning I cast on the second of my pink socks. And yesterday evening I completed the heel. Suddenly they have clicked and I am loving working on them! I fully anticipate that I will finish the second sock this evening. I will have a finished pair of socks very soon. The pattern for these still isn't complete though - it turns out the charts are more involved than I was hoping, but I will get them done by the end of the week (if you fancy test knitting them, head over to my Ravelry group and let me know in the testing thread).

Last night I went to my regular Monday night knitting night and, as ever, had a lovely evening. I also got my hands on some amazing yarn, courtesy of my friend Fay, who is an amazing knitter and indie dyer (you can find her Etsy shop here). Some of her yarn popped up on my Instagram and Facebook feeds last week and I couldn't resist! The yarn is inspired by kingfishers, and is utterly beautiful. It's a merino nylon blend, but is far too wonderful to become socks; this yarn deserves to be some sort of shawl. Watch this space.

How's your week been so far? Any tips on sleepless toddlers?

Linking up with Louisa for Keep Calm Craft On.