Followers on IG will recognise this top from my Me-Made-May17 endeavours, and I thought I would write a blog post on how this top came about.
A while back I bought a 75cm Italian wool remnant from Knitwit with the idea of colour blocking with some other fabric and making a SewHouse7 Toaster #1, which takes 1.7m of fabric. Hmmm. I did try laying the pattern on the fabric but was ridiculously short, so I decided I’d put contrasting sleeves in the top.
I shopped my stash for contrasting/coordinating fabric, then I visited Knitwit, then I had another look in my stash, but just couldn’t find anything I liked and which did justice to this really nice fabric. Then I woke up one morning and decided that I was going to get the whole thing out of my remnant, irrespective of my fabric shortage, even if I had to piece sections together like a quilt! This is my first pass at the pattern layout, and yes, the fabric probably is directional, but I had no choices at this point.
The first thing I did was to reduce the seam allowance from 1.5cm to 1cm. This made such a massive difference and my blue pen marks can be seen around the edges of the pattern. I cut them off and relaid the pattern. I had to put a centre seam down the back, and reduced the depth of the turtle neck. Having already made this pattern, I knew that the sleeves were too long so I reduced the depth and width of the cuff. I was so close! I reduced the depth of the bottom band, seamed it down the sides, and reduced the width a little bit to bring in the bottom of the top. Job done! This is all that I had left over, and I put it into a special bin for a future project.
This is my warmest Toaster, so I brought it along on my holiday, and boy, has it been useful! Here it is at Kicking Horse Falls
Hanging out in front of the hotel at Lake Louise
and performing virtual snow angels (no way was I going to get wet!)
It kept me warm in the gondola at Sulphur Mountain, Banff
and took me shopping in Banff
where I bought some amazing olive oil and balsamic vinegar, because, well, we clearly can’t buy those at home!
I have loved this Toaster, but decided it has done its job for this trip, so it’s now stowed away in a space bag awaiting a much needed launder. After this experience I have decided that the seam allowance for any knit patterns I make will be 1cm or even .6cm as I notice a lot of precious fabric goes in the thread catcher on my overlocker.
In all these photos I am wearing a really old pair of ponte jeggings. I used a jeans pattern and graded it down to a size 0 to make it tight. If my memory serves me correctly, I still had to take the legs in to make them remotely fitted. I used all the elements of the jeans including the coin pocket, but I put in a faux fly – mostly because I didn’t want to wrangle with a zip in the ponte. I’m also wearing a merino Deer and Doe Plantain tee with ruched collar and cuffs, and underneath that a silk tee that I should have consigned to the bin ages ago, but just can’t. The shoes are Birkenstocks.
We are now getting on the train to go to the eastern provinces of Canada, so I shall be out of internet range for three days. Never fear though, I hope to get some interesting photographs!