Boxy Tee Together

I know I have been doing and showing a lot of quilting lately, but I have picked up a knitting needle now and then.

I finished the knitting of my Boxy Tee and then blocked the pieces so they would be easier to sew together.

I was pretty disappointed to see that the purple bled. It's especially noticeable on the pink and light blue:

It was one of the yarns purchased as yarn and not harvested from a second hand sweater. I didn't even think about it and left the pieces soaking in a pot for a long time. If I had been worried about it, I could have soaked them flat instead of crumpled up, would have removed them quicker and could have used a colour catcher sheet. I'm going to block it again after it's seamed and the trim is on so we'll see if I can remove any of the excess dye. I don't hold too much hope though.

Then the pieces sat for quite a while. 1. I got absorbed into some quilting projects, and 2. I wanted to ponder which side to consider the "right side" and decide how to sew it together.

Here's a comparison--front:

 back:

The colours blend better on the "purl" side, but I have a hard time not thinking of it as the "wrong" side (which it usually is). It's hard to enjoy wearing something if your brain is constantly screaming, "It's inside out!" Also, the fabric tends to balloon out in the direction of the purl side which affects how it hangs on the body. With the knit side out, the garment tends to cling (in a good way). With the purl side out, it tends to pouf away from the body. This does not conform to traditional ideas of what "flatters" you, but maybe I shouldn't conform to the idea that skinnier is always better anyway.

In the end, I decided to try a reversible garment. I'll probably only wear it the one way (purl side out) but I'll feel better knowing I could wear it the other way. :)

The pattern has you pick up stitches along the edge of both pieces to be seamed together and then do a three-needle bind off to attach them. I decided this would look a lot like a single crochet seam and went with that instead.

The crochet seam has the added advantage that it looks the same on both sides since the selvage stitches (or seam allowance) are encased in the crochet stitches.

At first I was crocheting through just the selvage stitch (I slip the first stitch, so you get a nice chain up the side) but found that it wasn't overly neat. For one thing, sometimes I wasn't consistent about it, so I'd get odd spots like the one highlighted below:

And in other places, there were large gaps because the selvage stitches were loose. By the end, I was crocheting into the first proper stitch and it was looking better.

(Although in these pictures it is obvious it still needs a good blocking.)

The crochet pick up also gave me a place to hid all the ends.

With all the colour changes, there were a lot! I just pulled them through the crochet loops for about an inch and cut them off. The crochet is quite tight and doesn't stretch much so they are quite secure. I worked in the ends on each seam as I finished it so I didn't get stuck with a mountain of them all at once.

While reading through project notes of this pattern on Ravelry, I noticed another knitter used single crochet for the seams, but she didn't like that the neat "V"s of the stitch sat to the side and weren't visible from the front. In the picture below, I have folded the garment so the Vs face forward (nice and pretty). If you look at the picture of the seam above (the one after the knit/purl comparisons), you can see that when the garment is flat, you see the side of the stitch, not the top.

Although, I would love a nice neat row of Vs showing as well, I am not bothered by this. The  main intent of the pattern is to get a strong contrasting line of stitching on the seam, and you get that. What I don't like as much is the way it looks on the other side. It's more obvious in some places than others, but horizontal bars of red are visible and it doesn't look great.

I am planning to single crochet along those bars so that this side with have a "mock seam" visible and will have the same look as the pattern intended.

Once the seams were sewn, I could work on the armhole, neck, and hem trim. It was an interesting garter hem with a braid detail and then an i-cord bind off. (Talk about finishing a run with a marathon! It's been a lot of knitting to "finish" the garment!)

And as an added bonus, doing a four colour braid results in a big tangled mess of yarn.

For every stitch, you twist the working yarn. It's done in the same direction across the whole row, so you get a lot of built up twist. (Many times, the trim is done over two rows, twisting the opposite way on the second row which straightens out your yarn.) But there was only one row of twisting in this case. The good news was that I could cut three of those colours as soon as it was done and untangle the yarn.

The  multi-colour trim also left me a lot more ends to work in!

I couldn't work these into the crochet stitches if I wanted to keep the garment reversible. I tried to hide a lot of them under the twisted stitches of the braid, but now it looks like the braid isn't tight enough to hold them in place; a lot of them are showing their ends already. I may have to anchor them down better.

For the bottom hem, I could pick up the stitches from the provisional cast on that the front and back pieces were started from. When I was completely done the hem, I realized I had made one mistake:

On the first row, I knit when I should have purled, and it put the "two-colour" row of garter on the stockinette side. I would have rather had it on the reverse side with the rest of the two-colour rows.

Then the stockinette side would have had two neat rows of garter in each colour and the reverse side would have had alternating two-colour and single colour ridges.

Oh well. It's a tiny thing and likely never to be noticed by anyone. It would have made me happy if it was the other way though.

As I put the garment together, I was sure it was going to be much shorter than I wanted it to be. I figured it would just hit my waist band. But when I tried it on, it was fine. Not quite as long as my impression from knitting the back and front pieces (since they're only half the width, they give a very long and skinny impression), but comfortably long.

This was part of the reason I made the hem longer than indicated in the pattern. (I added an extra garter ridge in each colour.) It did help with the length, but I also think it is in better proportion to the whole garment now too. A skinny trim is ok on an armhole or neckband, but I generally prefer something with more "heft" (in visual appearance, if not in weight) for the hem.

All I have left to do is finish working in the ends of the neckband and give it another dunk to block it. I am thinking about stretching it a little more vertically when I dry it this time. I'll measure my current gauge and see how much different it actually turns out.

Almost Time for the Fair

At some point this spring I realized that the weekend I will be at family camp is the same weekend that the fair starts. So I was going to miss the morning you turn in your projects.

Not only would I not be able to help with the canning department (I'll miss my friendly judges and I know they'll miss me!), but on a personal level I wouldn't be able to turn in my projects.

Ack! I couldn't let that happen could I?

I thought on it for a while, whether I could impose one someone else to turn in my entries. I could think of a few people, but I wasn't sure I wanted to ask. And then a couple weeks ago, I saw my raffle quilt kit and pulled it out to see what I could come up with.

The theme for this year's blocks is "A Day at the Lake." They provided a 14" square piece of white and 10" squares of blue, "sand", a bright stripe and a dark brown. Early on I had the idea of a kayaker on a lake.

First step was looking at pictures online for a general layout and doing some sketching on paper. The kayaker, I traced onto double-sided adhesive and I traced the kayak onto a paper pattern.

 I stuck the adhesive onto the fabric (backside) and cut out the shapes.

For the background, I calculated how I could cut up a 10" square of blue (minus the selvage edge that they included in the measurement) and get the maximum coverage over a 12.5" block. Then I had to piece together the 10" piece of "sand" so it would cover 12.5" as well.

I used the white for the sky and I added a piece of yellow for a morning sun. (You're allowed to add two of your own fabrics.)

I cut away the white from behind the blue to reduced thickness. And after I had stitched the kayak onto the water, I decided I could cut the blue from behind it as well.

Since the kayak was only held in place with a little of glue stick (and not double sided adhesive), I could peel it back quite easily.

I used a stick-on/tear-away stabilizer when doing the zig zagging around the applique pieces.

It tore away easily enough, except where it was trapped behind the zig zag stitches. I thought about leaving it, but I just couldn't.

So a little time with a a dull needle and a pair of tweezers and I removed all of the stabilizer from behind all of the stitching. It'll make the block smoother and easier to work with while quilting (and satisfies my OCD at the same time!).

I used matching thread on most of the pieces with just a few touches of contrasting thread where needed, like here where I wanted to simulate the water on the paddle:

The last thing to do was to hide the loose ends where the stitching lines started and stopped.

I used the trick of using a separate thread on a needle to wrap around the ends and pull them under. (Works on short ends and you don't have to keep re-threading the needle!)

I pulled the ends in between the layers of the background and applique and you can't see a thing:

Here is the final block:

Once I had the block done, I knew I would have to find someone to turn in the block. Other projects I could submit next year, but this block is only relevant this year.

And the good news is that I did find someone who's willing to lug my stuff to the fair. :) I don't think I'll send everything I could, but I'll pull together a few projects. Which is nice...I'd hate to miss the fair entirely.

There and Back Again

I don't know if I mentioned that we were going away, but we spent a lovely week on the shore of Lake Superior in Michigan's UP. About 15 of my family was there and we were able to stay in three cottages (and a couple tents) on the same property. My sister was firmly informed by the border guard (coming in from Canada) that they call them cabins up here. Ok, then...

Troy and I had about six hours of driving time and I was looking forward to some prime making time! Now that we have the GPS unit, I am off navigating duties and I can sew, knit and whatever to my heart's delight. Or til my hands give out.

First up was to finish these socks that have been neglected for far too long:

All I had to do was work in the ends. Done. Just last night I gave them a bath and they are now drying on my sock blockers. I made them smaller than usual because I'm tired of having my hand-knit socks be too loose. Of course, then I was worried they would be too tight and scrunch my toes. But they fit the sock blockers (which are just my size) very easily and I am relieved.

I then pulled out the Farm Girl Vintage block for the week and finished up some embroidery that the block needed:

I won't show you the whole block yet. Since I was getting together with Kim, we skipped Skype and revealed them to each other in person. We covered three weeks while we were there so I'll be posting those separately when I can get to it.

And then I also sewed on the binding of my Mt Robson landscape quilt.

Oh, did I not tell you that I finished all the quilting before we left? Yes, I did. And it felt great to get it done. I'm even pretty pleased with the results. I pushed myself so I could then sew on the binding with the machine and have it ready for the hand sewing when I knew I would have all this time available to do it. I also "unvented" a way to sew the binding that's even more invisible, but I'll get to that when I show you the whole quilt.

While I was at the cottage cabin, I continued to work on the Mt Robson quilt. I finished sewing the binding and I worked on burying all the ends.

There were a lot of them! I saw a great method for how to bury them without having to rethread the needle all the time on some quilting show or online video and was glad to put it to use! I couldn't find the original source, but this video on youtube shows the same thing, if you'd like to see. It works just as well on really short ends, which I needed because sometimes I didn't cut long tails as I moved from section to section.

Even with a really great method, it was still a lot of ends to work in! I didn't finish at the Lake but have since finished that task at home. Pushing through those multiple layers of the heavy double adhesive backing used for the applique was not a joy.

When I wanted more fun at the cottage, I worked on some of my red nine patches. Here are a couple sewn and one in progress:

I did not want to do a random layout so I matched nine squares together (sometimes all the same fabric, sometimes not) and then safety pinned them together. Now I have lots and lots and lots of blocks that I can sew together.

I did the math and I need 288 blocks--that's 2,592 individual squares to cut! I have pieces cut and matched up for about half that many blocks.

On the way home, I worked on one of my Farm Girl Vintage blocks. I had finished one more at the cottage and this was the last one I had with me to do.

That accounts for the block that was due the day before we got there, the day after we got back and today. So I'm on schedule and will start the next block next week if I can tear myself away from the nine patches!

Although I had less to stitch on the way home, I made up for it by stopping at three different quilt shops!

I'm intrigued by the Row by Row program that started a few years ago and takes place each summer. Participating quilt shops have a free pattern and a kit you can purchase for a row that is 36" long. The idea is that you can pick them up while you're traveling and assemble them into a quilt because of the uniform length. (They also have very active Facebook groups for each state/province and it's fun to see everyone's quilts.)

Suffice it to say, I mapped each quilt shop on the way and warned Troy to allow for extra time! :) I had planned to catch a few on the way up, but all of them were closed on Sunday. So the way home was it. I was happy to hit three and by then we were bumping up to closing time for most of them. I discovered new quilt shops and a very nice one (pictured above) is right on the route we take. Easy to hit next time!

I have a few Row by Row patterns now and I'm still not sure I'm going to do anything with them. There are a lot of applique designs and I'm not sure I'm up for it. But it was a fun way to collect some souvenirs of the trip.

Another Quick (and Exciting) Update

Remember that knitting group that is expecting to see my lace coat finished? Well, they're meeting this Sunday. So I realized I had better sit down and finish things up. I knew there wasn't much left to do, but I was so geared up for quilting and had that familiar feeling of not wanting to finish a project. (Not because I'm dreading the work, but I think because I don't want the project to end. Sort of not want to finish a book you're enjoying reading.)

Anyway, all that is to say it's a good thing I had a deadline to push me to finish. First thing to do was graft the underarm stitches. I had the stitches sitting on my very fancy stitch holders (aka paper clips), eight from the sleeve, eight from the bodice. I transferred the stitches to some double pointed needles,

and then grafted them together. When I finished the first, I tried to evaluate my work by looking at the graft:

I couldn't find it!! (Can you?). I gave myself an A.

Then it was time to work in the ends. It wasn't too bad. I try to minimize them while knitting, and that helps. Working in ends in lace is a little nerve wracking because there isn't really any place to hide them. One trick I used was to untwist the strand into its composite plies and working them in separately:

This way you spread the bulk around and even though you have double the ends to work in, they're each less noticeable.

I finished all that last night, and then this morning I got up early (thanks to Troy unfathomably having the need to talk to me at 7 am--doesn't he know better by now?) and blocked this baby.

Not surprisingly, I did a little bit of a rush job (and was still a little late for work), but I had always figured I'd be touching this up with an iron. I thought the hem ruffle would need the most work, but it looks ok.

I did try on the coat before blocking. I was very happy with the sleeves, which I thought might be too short while I was knitting them. Even though I added an extra repeat to the skirt, now I'm thinking I should have added two or three. And the waistband seemed to hit a little high, but that may change a lot after blocking. We'll see!

And the final thing: I need to find buttons. I've shopped around a bit, but not seen anything that I really thought would be good. On the other hand, I have yet to raid the big button jar, so maybe I already have something. The pattern calls for two buttons, placed at the top and bottom of the waistband, but I think it would also be nice with a row of maybe six or eight small buttons. I'd better find something quick...Sunday is a'coming!