Winter Woolly

9 December 2011 22:57

A mohair-ish jumper

There isn’t much that I can do in the garden at this time of the year so I usually take up my knitting needles in the winter. I used to be really good at it but I’m a bit rusty now and I’m trying to get back to where I was skill wise.

I’ve looked in the shops for nice big thick jumpers but I haven’t had much luck finding what I wanted. They’re often too short because when it’s cold I like my bahookie (bum) to be nicely covered. But this year the sleeves are a bit strange too. Why are they designing nice big pullovers with short sleeves or three-quarter length ones? I don’t know about you but I like to have warm arms. In the past the sleeves always used to be too long for me and they would flap past my hands. I think I have short arms, it was a problem when I tried to learn the violin too, well that’s my excuse! I thought I had found a nice looking woolly in TK Maxx but when I pulled it out to get a good look I discovered that it had only one sleeve! Where’s the point in that?

Anyway, I looked through my small stash of wool and decided to knit an old favourite of mine. As you can see by the dog-earedness of the pattern it has been well used over the years since I first knitted it in the 1970s when leg warmers were first in fashion. I never did knit those but I have done the hat.

I’ve used Wendy Dolce wool which is fluffy but isn’t itchy, I’ve used it before with this pattern and it works fine. So as you can see the back is nearly finished and it hasn’t taken long, the needles are quite thick which always helps. I’ll show you the finished article before Christmas – maybe!

Another 1950s embroidery

17 November 2011 23:29

1950s cushion cover 1

I bought a job lot of 1950s embroidery projects from Ebay a while ago and this is the second one which I’ve tackled. The design is very traditional and old fashioned this time and none of the work had been started, it had obviously spent the last 60 years or so folded away in a drawer. When we move I’m hoping to get a house with a conservatory this time as I want a place for my cactus plants which will be safe for them. I’ve been keeping them in the greenhouse for years with no problems but the last two years I’ve had cactus fatalities when my aluminium greenhouse door froze up for weeks on end, so I couldn’t even rescue them. I digress – the cushions are for a conservatory which doesn’t exist as yet – except in my imagination.

As you can see from the first photo I should have done a lot (18 to be exact) of satin stitch circles but I thought the boredom of that might kill me. My solution was to rake through my mum’s old button tin and it came up trumps, as usual. Of course I’ve added buttons to the tin over the years but about half of them were mum’s. I found two sets of buttons of a similar rusty colour, I think they were originally on shirts which wore out. As luck would have it I had exactly nine of each set – perfect and they were very quickly sewn on. I think they look better than the satin stitching would have looked anyway. The flowers are going to be filled in yellow like buttercups and the others will be daisies. I’m hoping to get it finished soon because I have another Jacobean embroidery project which I’m chewing at the bit to start.

1950s cushion cover 2

The bottom left hand button looks strange but in reality it looks like the others, it must have been the flash or angle or something!

Jacobean Embroidery Updated

22 July 2011 23:40

 Jacobean Embroidery

As you can see I’ve finished embroidering the linen cushion cover which I started some weeks ago and I’m quite pleased with it. I like the really bright colours which are a feature of this sort of 1930s Jacobean design. It should brighten up a grey day and we certainly get plenty of them!

It was absolutely yonks since I had done any embroidering like this. I’ve been doing cross stitch and tapestry/needlepoint projects more recently but I must admit that I really enjoyed doing this kind of embroidery again and I now have a few more similar projects that I’m dying to get stuck into.

At first my stitching was quite dodgy really but I think that I improved as I progressed with it and I hope that the next thing I do will be better. I’m going to try using a finer needle with the hope that I’ll be able to manage more delicate stitching then.

Updated Jacobean Embroidery

20 May 2011 23:03

Jacobean Pattern embroidery

It’s years since I did any needlework which wasn’t either needlepoint or cross stitch, but I’ve been thinking of doing some designs of my own, loosely based on some lovely Honiton Jacobean design pottery which I have. So when I saw this old cushion cover going really cheaply on that auction site I had to bid for it. Well nobody else did!

A wee bit of the top flower had already been embroidered but the rest of it is my work and it has been really quick and enjoyable to do. I just wanted to get some practice in before embarking on my own variation on the theme. I was never very great at satin stitch but I am improving with practice and I’m quite pleased with the effect so far. As you can see I still have about half of it to stitch but it shouldn’t take long to complete.

This sort of design became very popular in the 1930s and it was still being done in the 1950s. Design sort of stagnated during the war. I don’t think people could get the material for doing fripperies, it was all knitting socks and mufflers for the troops. The original Jacobean designs were not quite as outrageously coloured, but it’s the bright, crazy colour combinations which I love.

Elsewhere on the craft front I’ve finished off the pansies needlepoint. I managed to get to grips with my sewing machine which for some reason behaved perfectly, it must just have needed a rest. I even managed to do a button hole on trousers and I put a new pocket in a pair of my husband’s trousers. If only he wouldn’t carry so much junk around in them they wouldn’t wear into holes. It was a nightmare to do and the next time they are going in the bin if he can’t put up with not using the pocket. The trouble is his mother was a sewing teacher, in fact she was MY sewing teacher, and he tends to think that all women can do what she could do. I’ve told him that she went to college for three years to learn how to make clothes and learn about all aspects of sewing, but I don’t think he believes me!

Ehrman Pansy Needlepoint

6 May 2011 23:10

Pansy Needlepoint

I was given this Ehrman needlepoint/tapestry kit a good few years ago and although I completed it ages ago it’s been languishing at the bottom of a work basket for yonks. It needed to be stretched as it was quite out of shape by the time I was finished with it and somehow the stretching process just kept getting put off. But I’m trying to get things finished off and everything in general just tidied up, plus I’m not allowing myself to start any new projects until I have finished old ones. So I stretched it, it didn’t take long at all, and now I just have to pull my sewing machine out and sew a velvet backing onto it and tarrah – one more cushion cover to add to the many.

That is actually easier said than done because my sewing machine and I aren’t on speaking terms at the moment. When I had her out a few weeks ago she wouldn’t do what I wanted her to do, no matter how long I wrangled with her! I’m hoping she has got over her hissy fit, I’m not very good with machines – or watches for that matter.

I’ve come to the conclusion that sewing kits aren’t for me because I really prefer taking my needle for a walk and being able to do my own thing. Kits like this one, with a painted canvas are a bit like doing a painting by numbers, not that I’ve ever done one of those, but you know what I mean, there’s no scope for doing your own thing. I think they’re quite good for beginners though.

The most annoying thing about doing the pansy design was that it had been designed almost like an impressionist painting with splashes of colour dotted all over the place, one stitch here and one over there. It gives a good effect in the end but it feels very bitty when you’re stitching it. It was designed by Elian McCready.

As you can see the date on the canvas is 1992 but I think that was when it was first designed rather when I was given it. I don’t think it can possibly have been hanging around all those years waiting to be finished. Surely not!

Here’s One I Did Earlier

15 November 2010 23:27

I’m nearly finished the canvas work sampler that I’m working on at the moment but I completed this cushion cover a while back. It’s a very simple design as you can see.

I love quilts and this is based on a traditional American patchwork pattern. It was quite relaxing to do and I was able to use up a lot of odds and ends of wool left over from other projects, so it was all very economical.

This pattern came from the lovely book- Mary Norden’s Needlepoint. I think it’s quite a good book for beginners.

As you can see I changed the design slightly to make the fences go all around the houses.

The pattern is called Home Sweet Home.

Recycled jumper

8 October 2010 15:47

Recycled jumper

At last, I managed to get around to sewing up the jumper which I knitted last year using wool from an old ripped out jumper. I was really just practising to get back into the way of it again. I used to be quite an expert knitter but I gave up when I had my children because I just didn’t have the time or the concentration to do it.

As you can see the wool is a really dreary grey colour, but grey wool always makes me laugh as it reminds me of my granny. She thought that grey cardigans were useful for wearing around the house. Well I know what she means now as she had a Victorian house, as I have now, and they aren’t half dusty but I don’t suppose it shows up against grey!

This jumper was knitted mainly in rib but there is a panel in the middle of reversed stocking stitch. I don’t know why I did that other than that I was just following the pattern, but I don’t really like reversed stocking stitch.

Anyway, I used the Stitchcraft pattern, it’s a 1953 magazine which I bought from ebay. I adapted it slightly so there aren’t so many buttons in my version.

Honestly, it’s quite a normal shape but I photographed it on my bed and obviously it wasn’t flat enough!

I’ve discovered that knitting wool seems to have become really expensive since I last bought some over 20 years ago but I got some reasonably priced stuff, from ebay again and I’m hoping to do something a bit more attractive next time.

Cross stitch embroidery

21 September 2010 23:56

55 Flower Designs cover

I’ve been sewing and knitting for donkey’s years and I think my favourite kind of stitching is needlepoint/tapestry, probably because it isn’t so hard on the eyes. Cross stitch often has me just about going cross-eyed but I couldn’t resist buying this book a few years back.

As you can see, I’ve just about finished the strawberry design which will be a reminder of summer for me. I have the teeniest wee alpine strawberries in my garden which grow all over the place. They taste lovely, that is if you can find them before the blackbirds do. The flavour is better than that of normal sized strawberries but I always think that they would be just perfect as a snack for a Borrower from the books by Mary Norton.

Band Sampler

22 August 2010 23:31

This blog is supposed to have some craft content in it but I haven’t had the time recently for crafting. I had thought that I was going to be reduced to blogging about “one which I did earlier”, but then I decided that it might be more interesting to show this band sampler.

It was passed on to me by Great Aunt Jenny, who was an aunt through marriage. She had had it rolled up in a drawer for absolutely years but thought that I might like it as I do embroidery. Jean Barclay wasn’t actually related to me, she was Aunt Jenny’s great grandmother and I think she was probably about 10 years old when she did this sampler. Just imagine how annoyed she must have been when the date wouldn’t fit into the space which she had left for it!

Band samplers weren’t meant to be framed. They were rolled up and kept in your sewing box for reference. But I wanted to be able to see it so I had it framed and it hangs on my living-room wall. I’m careful to keep it out of strong light though, so that it doesn’t fade.

I can’t make up my mind whether the date is meant to be 1823 or 1832.

Make Do and Mend

1 February 2010 23:25

I’ve noticed that a lot of people are looking for make do and mend articles at the moment. I haven’t got around to doing any sewing recently, but when I do, I’ve always found the Burdastyle website to be really helpful.

It has lots of tips and ‘how to’ videos which make everything seem really simple and you’ll find that it is useful whether you are a beginner or an expert at sewing.

This recession seems to have awakened a new enthusiasm in people to fix and re-make things rather than just chuck them out.
At least it keeps fabric out of landfill sites, which had apparently been causing problems before.