Striped Baby Cardigan

This week, I worked on this baby cardigan. You can probably tell that leftover yarns from some previous projects were used in this project. The short sleeves, with different color ribbing and underlying plain, full sleeves, might look like clever design elements, but are in fact improvisations on my part, as I ran out of yarns.

The pattern I started with, was Little Coffee Bean Cardigan, but these necessary, impromptu changes turned it into something else. Nevertheless, I still think it turned out quite cute.

Neville Sweater

I started this sweater in March and worked slowly on the body. Then it remained mostly untouched during the summer, only to be taken out last month. At the time of my last post, two weeks back, I was working on the first sleeve. Continuing on, I knitted both sleeves and joined them to the body and knitted up the fair-isle yoke to finish up the sweater.

 The yarn is our local acrylic, the pattern is a Garnstudio DROPS free design. I chose to make an adult size sweater for my ten-year-old, because it is a bit tiring when kids grow out of the handknits after a single season. My son can wear this one with rolled cuffs this year, and hopefully will last him a few more years.

The plain black part was boring and tedious stockinette st, and it was extremely slow-going, but the things looked up with the yoke. I loved knitting the fair-isle part. And the end result was totally worth all the slog.

The sweater has been well received, my son did not want to take it off, regardless of the fact that it was 32 C today. My husband also thought it was outstanding. And as a bonus, I think I got my knitting mojo back with this one.

Back And Knitting

I am sorry to have neglected this blog for so long. Things have been very busy for the last couple of moths, with Ramadan and Eid on top of the kids' summer vacations. I did not have much time for crafts (my kind, that is. I did a few paper crafts with the kids though.) and blogging.

But things are looking up and I have resumed work on the black sweater for my son. I am nearly done with the first sleeve. I am hoping to get through the second sleeve soon, so that I can start the interesting bit that is the yoke. A note to myself, however: black is not a good color to knit with, especially at night, at my age.

Spring / Summer Sewing 2014 - Part 3

The clothes for my 6-month old are done. I managed to get them done, before the deadline I set myself. The first one is a dress full of ruffles. There are ruffles at the bottom as well as at the armholes. It is a heavily modified version of one of my tried and tested pattern, from an old Burda magazine. You can see the my earlier project with same pattern here (the baby dresses).

 The second one is a two-piece outfit, a top with coordinating bloomers. This one is self-drafted. The yoke could have been neater, but it is still cute, nevertheless.

This post rounds up my sewing projects for this summer. I also sew a couple of shorts for my son, which saw a lot of rough use before I could do a post about them. And a few outfits for myself but those do not make for an interesting post.

Spring/Summer Sewing 2014 - Part 2

Our DSL connection has been out of order for a week now and shows no signs of getting in order despite repeated complaints. So I have had to borrow my husband's laptop and WiFi to write this post.
Today, I will show you the two dresses I made for my three year old.

 

First up is a dress with tiered skirt and fabric flowers at the waist. The bodice is lined. the fabric is cotton. Again the pattern is self-drafted. I made it a bit larger so she can grow into it over the summer.

The second one is the one which has the chicken scratch embroidery I mentioned in a previous post.

 Again, it is self-drafted with a lined bodice and a contrasting ruffle at the hem. The fabric is cotton. 

 This one is my favorite of this year's sewing.

 

Part 3 of Spring/Summer Sewing  2014 is under progress. I have just started on a couple of outfits for the baby. InshaAllah, I plan to have them done and blogged about, before the start of Ramadan. (Ramadan starts at the end of June.)

Spring/Summer Sewing 2014 - Part 1

 This post has been a long time coming. For the last few weeks, I have been using all and any free time I could get, to sew up some dresses for my girls. But there has been so little free time and the going has been very slow. But finally I do have some stuff to blog about.
 In this post, I will show you a couple of dresses for my eldest daughter. She got to choose the fabrics and you can see she has a thing for tiny flowers and blue color. Somehow I had difficulty deciding the patterns for these dresses. Again I went with her preferences, a full gathered skirt for both, no full-circle or tiered one for her. That narrowed down the choices and made decisions easier. Both dresses are self-drafted.

 The first one has a small floral print on black background. I made a simple gathered dress with short straight sleeves. I put solid purple edging around the neck and a purple frill around the bottom and then added a few fabric flowers on the front. The fabric is a lightweight lawn, very cool for our hot summer.

The second one is again a floral print which I coordinated with a solid teal. This one has a fully lined bodice. The fabric is pure cotton.

 Blogging about them, these seem so simple and straight forward, but these took so many days to get done. I guess motherhood is finally getting in the way of my craft time :)

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A Little Of Everything

First, an update on my neck strain: It got well in eight days with the help of medicines and rest. As promised, I ripped open the pillow and took out more that a third of its filling. I am happy to report that it is comfortable now and is in regular use without any problems.

Since the last post, I have been dabbling in a range of craft activities but have not progressed much with any. Hot weather with ten hours of loadshedding makes one so lethargic. Still a glimpse of what I have been up to... a bit of knitting, it is going to be a sweater for my son, who is now into teen sizes, mashaAllah.

Then there was a bit of spinning:

And a bit of chicken-scratch:

And some sewing. During my spring cleaning, I got hold of my husband's old shirt and had to upcyle it into a girl's top. (Tutorial here).

 

 A few new summer dresses for my daughters are also in progress. I hope to finish them soon and take some pictures. Sewingis getting so much more enjoying as I am getting better at it.