Tag: slow fashion

Knit Cotton Tee Shirt – Finished!

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This shirt started from a tutorial posted by Lauren of Motherofpurl1 on Instagram on how to do an I-cord cast on. I knew immediately I needed to make a shirt with one, and I had a good handful of this DMC Natura yarn left in my stash from a trip to France about 8 years ago.

I wasn’t sure about getting the collar over my head, so I decided to add a small keyhole opening to the back and left myself a long enough tail to crochet a small chain of a few stitches to act as a buttonhole. I even had a near-perfect match of a tiny button in my button bin. (And the opening ended up being completely unnecessary, but it’s cute)

I used each yarn until I ran out of what I had left, hence the uneven stripes. But I managed to have similar enough amounts to make it look like the stripes are intentionally large and small like that.

I ended the bottom and the sleeves with just some 2×2 ribbing and my usual bind off of Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off. Because of the natural yarn restrictions, I did the sleeve edges right after connecting the body at the underarm before using the rest of the pink yarn in the body.

I did very minimal shaping at the chest, just a few increases above and decreases below on the front, plus a few increases at the sides of the hips, but mainly the body is just plain stockinette after the raglan sleeves.

This was just a stash-busting project for myself and not an actual design, but it was a fun “mindless” knit between a bunch of design projects and a test project for another designer.

Spinning Quite a Yarn

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I was super excited when Lauren McElroy’s Crafter’s Box collaboration was announced. I love her Instagram content and have always been interested in learning to use a drop spindle, so it was a perfect box to spend some birthday money on.

There was a small bit of a learning curve, as you can see from the progression in that photo, but the video class was so easy to follow. I even started incorporating some color with some roving from Ganxxet.

Once I had a good amount of two-ply yarn, I wanted to create a project with it. I swatched a bit in crochet and knitting to decide which looked better. The crochet showed off the variation in the thickness (which we will pretend was intentional), so I started a hat.

The yarns I used were about 4-5 WPI, and I roughly measured the smallest amount to find out that I had about 6.9 yards per 10 grams. This hat used 58 grams of the all-white yarn and 41 grams of the blue/purple/white yarn. Really rough estimates mean that I used around 68.31 yards in total.

I’ve also started experimenting with chain plying the yarn (the two small skeins in this picture), which is a lot of fun. I don’t have enough of it yet to do much with it, but I’m thinking maybe gloves.

If you are looking to learn drop spindle spinning, I’d definitely recommend this kit. It’s still available through The Crafter’s Box Marketplace, and they have some accessories you can also pick up through the marketplace to create even more yarns.

A Year-long Quest for Shorts

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Yes, once again demonstrating a flair for dramatics with that title. But I also made 4 pairs of shorts in about a month after putting it off for a full year.

You see, my mom was frustrated with the lack of non-denim shorts in stores about a year ago. Seems a strange thing to be looking for in February now that I am sitting here in March in less than 50 degree weather, but perhaps I put off making that first pair of shorts as well and she was actually looking for shorts in the summer. Now that I think of it, that’s probably what it actually was.

Anyway, I set about to draft a pattern and quickly got bored of that idea. So I found a commercial pattern I could tinker with instead. (McCall’s M6930 if you are also looking for one. I used option A but shortened the inseam a bit.) I was able to combine two sizes to get them to fit the way she wanted, not to mention they have actual, functional pockets instead of the fake pockets women’s shorts usually have.

I made the first version as a test out of the fabric she had the most of, but for those I used some snaps I had in my stash instead of those slider buttons pants usually have. That turned out to be a mistake, because they continually pop open, but by waiting a year until things opened up a bit more I was able to get the actual hardware I needed for the “real” shorts.

I am thinking of once again taking the easy road and modifying the pattern for myself to make some short leggings for under dresses this summer. Or it might just be easier to draft my own pattern for those. We’ll see. I still have a dress in pieces hanging out in my sewing bin that I should probably finish first.