The pattern is Butterick 5639 (View C). The fabric is Valori Wells Pebbles in the Linen Cotton blend. I made a muslin (thanks to the Couture Dress Class), adjusted the bust fit, raised the neckline, and tweaked a bunch of stuff. I also did some nice finishing on the inside by encasing the seams in a bias binding from the same bodice lining material which is Kona cotton in ‘Cocoa’.

I’m really happy with it. The fabric was pretty sturdy stuff, so I didn’t feel like the bias binding was adding too much bulk, and it really does give a lovely finish. The zipper insertion went well, thanks to a quick refresher from a free Craftsy class.

I can see this being a summer staple for sure.

I am making my own clothing, I am cooking food from scratch and eating more whole grain, I’m cooking meatless at least twice a week (although this is mostly a reactionary measure since so many heart & cholesterol problems have cropped up in my immediate family), and I’m growing the majority of my food during the half year that I can.

Patchwork coasters make tea-time prettier.

I also feel privileged that I’m at a place in my life where I CAN make things. Making things isn’t cheap. Many companies sell their products for less than it costs to make them. And making things WELL is never cheap either. I could buy a cheap polyester fabric to sew a dress, but I know that in the long run it will hold up, and be more comfortable, and get much more use if I use a well made cotton fabric. Also, polyester is made from petroleum products, of which there is a finite amount on this planet. My cotton dress, when it’s all worn out, can be composed back to the earth where it can fertilize more cotton. It’s not using up a finite material like polyester is. It also means one less dress made by an underfed, overworked teenage girl working in a dangerous building in Bangladesh. Also, duh. Cotton feels better

Heirloom tomatoes in my garden

I am incredibly lucky that I have the flexibility in my income to do this. I have been at a place in my life where I wanted to buy produce, but could only buy pasta and canned sauce because I had to stretch a food budget. I know what that is like. That’s why I get so angry about shit like this. If you don’t want to bother reading the link, it’s a 10-step list of how to turn regular recipes into REAL FOOD recipes. “REAL FOOD” being less processed, more natural, etc… While I have nothing against this idea (and work really hard to avoid processed foods in my life), the tone of this completely blows me away. It’s written in such a way that if you aren’t already doing all this “REAL FOOD” eating, then you should be ashamed of yourself. Any time something is laid out so Black & White I get nervous. How many times were we told “butter is bad for you”, and then we were told “butter is good for you”, and then we were told “butter in moderation”. Life is a journey of discovery. If you feel bad when you eat lots of butter, then forget the article you read that says to eat lots of butter and eat whatever the hell you want! A lot of people are helped by fish oil supplements, but they make me vomit everything I ever ate. So I won’t be taking Fish Oil, thanks. You have to use your own common sense and listen to your own body.

A tee I made… probably the best tee I own!

I’d love to hear what you all have to say about it. Please feel free to comment and we can carry the discussion on there.

M

p.s. Discussing this a few days ago with Ysolda led both of us to post about it. Her post has a much more interesting details about the supply chains and industry models than mine, so go read it!

I bought the book for a couple of bucks at a library surplus book sale, and didn’t realize until later that it was written by Simon Schama. I’ve been a fan of Schama since his History of Britain documentary series (thanks to Annie‘s recommendation). His style of weaving history together with the popular current events of the times (including news stories of the day that would have influenced the key people, or what their peers wrote about them in correspondence) makes the whole thing come alive. It’s like watching an intricate screenplay rather than reading dull, dry historical facts.

Right now I’m reading about the economic factors that led to the French Revolution. It’s a testament to Schama’s writing that I’m enjoying it enough to shun the fiction on my reading list and considering schlepping the rather weighty book along with me on the train.

I’ve been working this year on making more than I buy. There are many posts or articles out there railing against consumerism, and I don’t want to reinvent the wheel, so I won’t go over all the reasons I want to be less consumerist here. But for me, at this point in my life, I realized that I have the skills, the desire, and the resources to be able to make a greater portion of my life. The sweatshop fire in Dhaka late last year basically pushed me over the edge and I decided to put my money where my heart is.

I’m finding that I have a lower tolerance for ill-fitting and cheaply made things now that I understand the work that should go into them. It takes an extra minute to run a second stitching line around a pocket to reinforce the seam, but it makes a world of difference to the usability of the finished piece.

While I’m still a little scared of making a well-fitting woven dress (and taking The Couture Dress class on Craftsy to combat the fear with a wealth of information and experience), I’ve been making lots of knit clothing and woven fabric stuff that doesn’t require a lot of tailoring. And I’ve scheduled myself some sewing time every week to ensure that I squeeze it in.

Last week I made the dress in the photo up top, which is a Museum Tunic in some Anna Maria Horner Voile called “Pastry Line”, and I also made a quick fold-top knit skirt from some super discounted stripey knit fabric I got on a recent trip to So. Cal. This week I’m spending some time making muslins for a couple woven fabric dresses to make sure they fit properly. I also had a great conversation with Lizzy House about her plan to have a closet full of her handmade clothing. And I’m hoping that A Verb For Keeping Warm does another summer of Seam Allowance so I can join in remotely and get some support in this process.

<3
M

1. What kind of learning experience do you prefer best?
a) Single Technique Tutorials (like searching for “Provisional Cast On” on YouTube and watching videos).
b) In-person project-based classes at a LYS (like a class to make a particular garment/accessory where the class goes over any interesting techniques or tips in order to produce that piece, but the focus is clearly on making the garment/accessory)
c) In-person technique-based classes at a LYS (like a class on different methods of shaping a sleeve. Not tied to a particular project, but more knowledge based that you can apply to your own projects).
d) Other. Please explain.

2. Do you prefer classes to be a weekly recurring thing (i.e. 2 hours every Thursday for a month), or a one-time thing (i.e. 4 hours on a Saturday)?

3. What subjects would you like to learn more about? This is totally me fishing for ideas for new classes, so go nuts!

Thanks everyone!
Miriam

First, let’s do the Cast-On Edge Hem.

If you’ve never done it this way, I highly recommend you try it. It takes a bit more time to get started, but it leaves such a clean join that I think it’s worth the time.

Here we have a provisional cast on (tutorial video here), the olivey green facing (done with a smaller needle. Normally I would have done one size smaller, but I couldn’t find my US 5, so I used a US 4), with the last row of the inside facing knit in the Main Color (white). If you skip this step and change colors right before you begin the turning row, then your turning row will have both the Facing Color and the Main Color on the purl bumps. Work the turning row with the smaller needle helps you keep a nice firm edge, but then change to the larger needle and knit an equal to slightly longer length of the Main Color knitted with the larger needle for the outside of the hem. Sometimes these hems have a tendency to flip up, but I find that if my outside length is just a slight bit longer, then the firm fabric on the inside tends to keep the curl in check a bit more. YMMV.

Now start undoing the provisional cast on. If you did a chain tail, once you undo all the chains you’ll get to this point. Move the olive green tail out of the way and you’ll see a loop of your Facing Yarn stuck between two segments of your provisional yarn (the blue yarn in my swatch). That loop of olive green is a live stitch.

Slide your left hand needle (the one holding all your stitches into the Facing Yarn Loop. It should have the same orientation as all your other stitches (right leg in front, left leg in back).

Then if you pull the waste yarn tail gently the chain will “unzip” and that stitch will now just sit on your needle.Knit together one Main Color stitch with one stitch from the provisional Cast-On. Now the next stitch from the provisional cast on should be stuck between segments of the waste yarn. Repeat the last 2 steps for all stitches across the provisional edge. If you didn’t increase during your swatch then you should have the same number of stitches in the provisional edge as you do in the live Main Color stitches. *Note:* The last stitch of the provisional cast on doesn’t really look the same as the rest, but if you pull both ends of your waste yarn up and away from the swatch, then that last stitch should lift up and present itself for you to knit it together with the last MC stitch.

This is what your swatch should look like from the wrong side as you join the provisional and live edges. You can see that the knitted joining row makes a line of the main color appear on the contrast facing. It reminds me of top stitching on a sewn garment, and it’s one of my favorite parts of a hem like this.

Now, let’s do the Bind-Off Edge Hem.

So the problem is that a Cast-On Edge hem is worked with the knitted-together join at the very top because the live stitches from the outside hem are there, and the provisional stitches from the contrast facing can be folded up to meet them. Both ends have live stitches, which are worked together to form the join. But a Bind-Off edge hem will only have one live edge to join and nothing to join it to because you have to knit PAST the join point in order to knit both the outside and inside of the folded hem. So here’s my fix.

At the join point (If your folded hem is 1″ wide, then it would be 1″ before the desired length of the piece). You need to work a doubling row. To do this, knit into the front of the first stitch, leaving the original stitch on the left hand needle….

Then knit into the BACK of the first stitch using a much smaller and seperate needle. This can be a bit tricky. It feels a bit like a backwards three needle bind off. The key is to make sure that your working yarn is always UNDERNEATH the two needle points. So after you knit into the front leg of the stitch, bring the yarn down toward the swatch, bring your second needle in on top of the working yarn, and then knit into the back of the stitch.

Repeat this all across the row. You should have the same number of stitches on the back needle as the front needle.

Then work a matching outside hem piece, change to the smaller needle and work the reverse stockinette turning row. Change yarns (since the stitches left on your needle after the turning row will become the matching edge of MC in the CC facing once you knit them with the contrast yarn) and one row short of a matching contrast hem. You need to stop one row short because we’re going to create the last row with a modified kitchener stitch in the next  step. The front should look like the photo on the left, and the back should look like the right-hand photo, with the smaller needle still hanging out in the extra stitches on the doubling row.

Now fold the end of the contrast hem toward the doubling row and break your contrast yarn with a tail about 3 times the length of the row. Thread the tail on a tapestry needle and work modified kitchener as follows: Go through the first stitch on the front needle as if to purl and slip it off the needle……

Thread through the next stitch on the front needle as if to knit, and leave it on.

Thread through the first stitch on the BACK needle as if to purl and slip it off the needle, then thread through the next stitch on the back needle as if to knit, and leave it on.  Both front and back needles will have the same “Purl, Off, Knit, On” treatment. This is what will give you the little line of MC purl ridges that looks so much like top stitching!

The Cast-On Edge Hem is at the bottom and the Bind-Off Edge hem is at the top. You can see that from the back there is a slightly different look to the doubling row.

But from the front, the look the same (except for the place close to the left side on the top hem join where it looks like I accidentally worked two stitches together during the doubling row. Oops. Figured it out when I had extra stitches in the graft). But close enough

Enjoy! Many happy facings to you!

M

The LA County Yarn Crawl begins in a couple of days and Knit Culture has some pieces of mine for a trunk show going up. Check out all the great LA area yarn shops and try on some of my favorite pieces! The yarn crawl runs from April 11-14, but my trunk show will be there until the 4th of May.

Also, to end the trunk show at Knit Culture, I’ll be stopping by to teach Triangular Shawl Shaping on Saturday, May 4th from 2-5 pm. It’s gonna be great fun! We’ll go over 5 different ways to shape a triangular shawl by making 5 mini shawls. If you’ve been afraid to try a shawl, or just want a better understanding of how the shape is made, this is a great class for you! Come join me at Knit Culture on the 4th! You can sign up for the class here or by calling the shop.

Fabric Care Symbol Guide from the Cleaning Institute, originally found via Whipup.net