June was knits month in the Stashbusting Sewalong group, and I thought I’d do a roundup of all the knits I’ve made this month but didn’t blog.
All of these garments have been made whilst camping as I find that knits are really easy to put together in a fairly rough environment. In June I stash busted 15.7m of knits (plus some 7m of woven fabrics), which is pretty good going.
Probably my favourite make is the Jasper Sweater/Dress from Paprika Patterns. I was inspired to make this pattern by the stunning examples produced by meggipeg and marjoriesews. They both chose the collared version, but I do love me a hoodie, so I chose View A.
This is a really elegant hoodie. It has princess seams in the front which give it a lovely flattering shape. A big plus is those welt pockets. As you can see the hood is oversized, which gives me a slightly monkish air, but I tend to only use a hood when I am really cold, so I don’t expect to use it much.
I really liked the placement of the buttons, and managed to find three lovely vintage buttons in my stash, which I think add an interesting element to the design.
It rained pretty much the whole time I was taking these photos and the fabric stood up really well to the dampness, so I deem this hoodie a success.
Next up was this striped Nettie bodysuit
I did my level best to match the stripes on the armholes, but not overly successfully. Looks ok in this photo, but it’s not wonderful. I pinned every stripe to get the matching right, but the angles were all wrong.
However my side seams are epic!
Luckily I will probably never wear this bodysuit without something over the top, so it’s no biggie.
I also made several t-shirts for Mark (which I did press, honest), which I am showing here so my family know that I don’t just sew for myself! The first one is a lovely striped cotton.
and the other two are made from some really thick merino wool fabric that I bought years ago in Dunedin, NZ. These t-shirts are smaller so that Mark can wear them as a thermals under jumpers (only one is shown, but he now has two identical thermal t-shirts). I had to laugh because the first time Mark wore one of these, he complained that he was too hot and had to take it off.
I made this top No 6 and 11, the Square Top, from the Japanese pattern book “She wears the pants”. It’s nice because it can be worn as a shrug (with arms in sleeves, rather than the way it’s styled in the book) and as a top. This fabric was leftover scraps from my 1960s 3-arm dress, and I still haven’t used it all up. I have struggled to make this top look acceptable. The fabric is supposed to be crinkled but it just looks scruffy. I’m not overly fussed as I really wanted to see how the pattern would look on me. I’ll wear this top camping where no-one will see me!
I was going to cut my bottom half out of this photo, but I thought I would include the full catastrophe – yes, I had my slippers on – wonderful styling!
I also made some new undies from tricot instead of cotton – this is so that I have underwear which dries quickly when I’m travelling. I cut these undies out when I was camping and to my horror I found a little chunk out of the top which I hadn’t noticed when cutting out.
I scrabbled around in the very limited supplies that I take camping and found some non-matching lace, but artfully arranged it so that it covered the problem.
They look ok and are divinely comfortable to wear.
Details:
Jasper Sweater/Dress by Paprika Patterns, made from some blue fleece I found in the $2 bargain bin at Potter Textiles. The buttons are really old and came from Buttonmania in Melbourne.
Bodysuit is the Nettie by Closet Case Files, made from a remnant from Potter Textiles.
Mark’s t-shirts are the Metro Men’s t-shirt from Oliver & S. The striped fabric came from Pitt Trading where I was happily enabled by Susan from Measure Twice Cut Once. Once again thanks to Maria of Velosewer fame for taking me to such a fabulous shop. The green merino is from Global Fabrics in Dunedin, NZ.
The striped top is pattern No 6 and 10, the Square Top, from “She Wears the Pants” (the book used to be entitled “In a Mannish Style”, but I was slow to buy so got the less attractively named version). The fabric came from Knitwit and was bought in their sale so I had far too much of it.
Undies are the Watson bikini and are made from navy tricot I bought from Susan at Pitt Trading. The lace was a scrap.