Spring Knitting And Sewing

The spring in definitely in the air, here in Islamabad. The winter chill is gone and we have days at a stretch, of warm sunshine, interspersed with spring showers. My latest projects suit this change in weather.

My old reader might know that I have a thing for girl dresses with knitted bodices. So, I recently got hold of two balls of cotton yarn, in light fingering weight, to make a couple of spring dresses for my 6-year-old. I bought the yarn online and was a bit worried about running out. But in the end, I managed two get both bodices done, using down to the last inch of both yarns.

Next, I went to shop for matching fabrics and thankfully found some suitable ones quickly. It took one evening to sew up the dresses and another to sew on the buttons.

I love these part-knit part-sewn dresses and would love to test some other stitch patterns in the futre, insha Allah.

In other accomplishments, I did an early spring-cleaning of my craft closet and it has made me resolved to use up some of my stash. I'm still undecided about what to cast on next, socks maybe, or a stole.

New Ventures

It has been more than a month since I updated the blog. It has been tiresomely hectic. In addition to the mundane affairs of domestic life, the summer has arrived with quite a literal bang. We are having a few problems. These problems are not unfamiliar to my compatriots, and the old readers of this blog must also be familiar with electricity load shedding . It has been the norm for the last many years and worsens during the hot weather. The new twist to this old demon, this year, has been power surges or sudden fluctuations in voltage, which have fried a number of electric appliances at our home, over the last week. Our computer and modem have had to be fixed twice in this time period, and a fan and couple of lights have required replacements. In addition to this bewildering state of affairs, is a long-going water crisis. Islamabad has been in the grips of this poorly-managed water shortage for a couple of years now. This too, has worsened with the rising temperature.

All these day-to-day stresses tend to cloud one's creativity, as one figures out a triage of washing, cleaning, cooking and laundry with the limited water, and keeps an eye out for any unusual electrical activity. Alhamdolillah ala kulli haal.

Needless to say, it is still too hot for knitting my cardigan and I find myself little inclined to start some lighter fibre project. Instead, I have been exploring some new ventures.

I have been trying my hand at handlettering. I have wanted to do this  (as well as some water color practice) for a long time and finally started last month. I have been posting some of it on my instagram.

The other thing I really went into, was jewelry-making. It has been so much fun and I made so many earrings and bracelets. Even my kids joined in the circus hobby.  I have bought some new supplies and still have many ideas to try. I will probably get a few Eid gifts out of these.

And as if beads and wire were not enough, I tried some resin craft as well. And made a load of fridge magnets. This too is very addictive and I am afraid our fridge is going to run out of display space soon. I am thinking of doing a couple with buttons, as well.

Then, it is the time of the year when I sew Eid dresses for my girls. I have started on them and hope to get a major portion done before Ramadan, inshaAllah

So you can see how our summer problems have had an adverse ( or is it perverse ? ) effect on me and spurred me onto newer crafts. 

Eid Dresses

Here is the promised post about the Eid dresses I made for the girls. It took a few days to get cool and dry enough weather to get a photo shoot. The fabric for all three dresses was the same, though I used only two color schemes. (Could not find a nice enough color for the youngest, so used the same color scheme for her as the oldest). Fabrics are diamante chiffon for the tops and dupattas and jamavar for the bottoms. And gota trim on the shirts (kameez).

For the younger two, I sewed Kameez with shalwar/straight pants.

Now for the interesting part, and the star of my sewing _ the gharara. My nine year-old has recently developed in traditional flouncy pieces, so I offered to sew her a gharara. Gharara is a traditional dress of the Muslim women of the indian subcontinent. Although no longer part of our day-to-day wear, it is one of the staples at weddings and makes a fashion come-back every now and then, with a modern twist. This year happens to be one of those years.

It is essentially a pair of extremely flared pants, the lower part of which is cut on bias and gathered at the knees. The seam at the knee is adroned with some trim or embellishment. It is worn with a short (and sometimes long shirt and a dupatta/stole). Its construction is quite complex and tricky. At least it was for me, as it was my debut attempt. The slippery fabric made it all the more challenging. And I had no idea how much yardage I would need. All things considering, it turned out quite satisfactory. 

My daughter had a great time wearing it, so it was all worth it. She still wants a ready-to-wear lehnga (traditional flared maxi skirt) for the next Eid. (Losing interest in your mom's handmade stuff has to be the first sign of growing up, I had to bribe her with a matching hand-sewn clutch).

In knitting news, I am just starting on the sleeves of the July sweater and hope to get it finished soon.

Summer Sewing

Ramadan, our favorite month of the year, is down to its last 11 or 12 days. We had a wonderful start to the month, when we were able to sight the Ramadan crescent ourselves.

Since then, it has been all business, fasting, the suhoor (pre-dawn meal) and iftaar (the break-fast meal) and adjusting to a different sleep routine. On top of the hot June weather, we had to deal with a viral fever, which took all four kids in turn. That made the start of the month especially full.

I have had little time or inclination to do any craft work. Here I am sharing the sewing I did a couple of months ago, for my eldest daughter. These are a couple of lawn fabric tops and a dress.

The first one is a chevron print sewed into a Japanese-style top, inspiration for which abounds on pinterest.

The second top is a floral peasant blouse with raglan sleeves.

 And lastly, there is the multicolored polka-dot dress with a circle skirt. All these were my own drafts.

This summer has been very productive sewing-wise. I have sewn a lot of things, most of which do not make it to the blog. The most ambitious of  all was the sewing of Eid clothes for the girls _ glittery, shear, hard to manage fabrics, turned into cute, fun traditional dresses. I do hope to share them here after Eid.

In knitting, I have an almost done sweater front, with lace details, to share. In the next post, insha Allah.

Toddler Dress

The finished sweater (in this case, I use the term loosely to include all types of clothing) for the month of May, is the dress for my youngest daughter that I started last October. It was a good thing that I cast on for a size bigger than her size at the time, seeing how long it took me to finish it.

 It is another DROPS pattern, one which I have knit once before,  back in 2010, for my niece. I knit the 3/4 year size, and the skirt portion had knitting in it equivalent to an adult sweater.  It got boring and went into time-out, at the end of last year. But I got it out a couple of weeks ago and knit the remaining few inches on the skirt. From then on, it went relatively fast, and I am happy to have it finished.

Now that I have no project on the needles, I have been dealing with the pre cast- on inertia, where I take my time getting things like pattern , yarn and supplies ready for the next project ready.  And some quiet time to actually cast on. This may happen tonight or tomorrow.

 Meanwhile, we have a birthday to celebrate. Our middle daughter  as turned five today.

March Sweater Progress

My knitting resolutions for 2016 include knitting at least two full-fledged sweaters for each of the four kids, plus a couple of vests and a sweater and vest for myself, insha Allah. It roughly amounts to a sweater a month. I finished one sweater for my son at the start of the year, and completed the second one for him, last month. Now I am working on the third sweater.

  It is to be a tunic/dress for my second daughter. Now that the fun part of knitting that is colorwork, is done, I feel my progress slowing down. But with half a month left, I am optimistically hopeful that it will be done within my set deadline.

Meanwhile, I am shortlisting patterns for another five sweaters for my girls. Do you have any favorites to recommend?

October Update

I have no pictures of any wonderful FO (finished object) yet, but my knitting has picked up speed lately. I started this month with a dress for my daughter. Fingering weight yarn on 3.25 mm needles, made ten days of knitting equivalent to this:

At that point, I decided to take a break and start something else. Almost-worsted weight yarn on 5 mm needles made a for much faster knitting and this sweater has come this far over a few days:

I have finished the sleeves since I took that photo and hopefully there will be a FO within a day or two, insha Allah. Which means, it is time to pick my next thicker yarn project, to knit alongside the toddler dress.

Green Baby Dress

This year, I find myself drawn to little baby dresses to knit. I am currently knitting one of my youngest and I got one off the needles recently. This post is about the latter.

 Like several knitters on Ravelry, I took the hybrid approach for this dress, taking the yoke pattern from one pattern and the body pattern from another. As I was using finer yarn, I had to do many modifications to the yoke, adding rows to the leaf pattern and simultaneously increasing the stitch count. For the body, I did eleven repeats of the flora dress pattern. I ended up doing rib border instead of moss stitch one, as it looked neater in this acrylic yarn. It all sounds quite complicated but it turned out quite easy to execute. I think it is a fine dress, though I am not sure about the color and acrylic is not the best choice of yarn for this dress.

Eid Sewing

 

 The only sewing project I did this Eid was a dress for my eldest daughter. She wanted something fancy, with glitters, sheer material and whatnot.

  She chose the style herself while I got to pick the materials. The sewing itself was pretty straight forward. A simple bodice out of sequined fabric and a full skirt made of tulle panels with a lining. The bodice is lined too. The brown ribbon at the waist brought everything together.

 

 Needless to say, she loves wearing it.  And I love that twirl.

My Princesses

This project further proves the point that one does not think straight when in the throes of maternal love. At one such moment, I promised my daughters dresses inspired by Elsa's, of the animated movie Frozen. Soon afterwards, I realized the rather tall order I had set up for myself and tried to wiggle out of it, by using the well-known tact called procrastination. I hoped the girls would forget about the promise or move on to something simpler. But the "Frozen" bug is particularly tenacious at our house and it outlived my excuses for procrastination.

 Still, I took my time with these dresses, gathering supplies in February, sewing these up in March and getting to blog about them in April. The girls were very patient (which again shows the hold, the bug has on them) with me and even enjoyed the process, as the dresses evolved.

 

There were a few tears at the end though, when Amma (that is I) played Scrooge over the sequins. In my defense, I was finally trying to hurry things along, and hand-stitching that many sequins is both time- and labor-intensive work. More sequins got stitched on and we had a happy ending.

As for the dresses, my older daughter helped me pick out the materials.I looked around Pinterest for ideas and inspiration.The dress draft was my own. I decided on a detachable train, as I suspected it would be too cumbersome to have a train at all times.

 

 There are already requests for some more dresses, but I have successfully dodged them for now.

Knitted Yoke Dress

 Appropriate to the changing seasons, this project is a knitting/sewing hybrid. I used about 100 yards of this cotton/nylon yarn to knit a yoke and then sewed it into a dress.

The multicolored yarn does not give much stitch definition and may not be the best choice for a yoke, but this was the most practical project, I could think of, for this yarn.

 The dress fabric is cotton with a cotton trim and a satin ribbon for embellishment. It is sized to fit an almost four-year-old.

Maxi Dress

On one of my recent excursions to our local yarn store, I bought a couple of skeins of variegated yarn. I planned to do something spectacular with them, only to realize later, that it is hard to pick the right pattern for this kind of yarn.
  Anyway, the first skein turned into this baby cardigan. For the second skein, I did a bit of deliberation and search, before settling on the Maxi Top/Dress pattern. Luckily, I had a right shade of contrasting yarn in my stash.

I am so glad I picked this pattern. It was such a fun knit, quick and easy to boot. And the final dress came out quite nice. I would recommend this pattern to all knitters who have a little girl to knit for.

This dress is for my second daughter. I knit the 4/5 size, so it has some ease on the 3.5 year old. That, of course, means it will fit her for sometime. Maybe, she can wear it as a top later on.

The dress was very well-received. I had to coax her to get it off after the photo shoot (it is still not sweater weather here).
Next, I have some larger sweaters to work on.

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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