Craft Enabled, Domestically Disabled

Julia Stiles does T-shirt reconstruction.

BWAH. "Ten Shirts I Love About You."

"And what do you do with the scraps?" "Huh?"

DIY sweater

For years I have been trying to figure out how one designs patterns. I am still pretty clueless on HOW one does it.

So as mentioned before, I have been trying to find a suitable cardigan pattern to adapt. I haven't really quite found anything that I liked. So...going on the very loose instructions in the back of my Custom Knits book, I'm trying to make a top down raglan cardigan sweater.

So far it's going okay with working out the thing with only a gauge and the back of my neck measurement....

Sewing class update

Of four people in class last night, two people finished their pajama pants and two others are pretty close to it. Huzzah!

Knitting update

I am still working on the last of my homespun yarn, making a sweater. It's going to have to be a short-sleeved sweater, which I think is kind of stupid (short-sleeved turtleneck, no less, because I wanted to do a top-down raglan so I'd know when I ran out of yarn), but somehow 1200 yards does not translate into enough yarn for that on a raglan sweater?

I keep redoing the bottom of it (kept redoing the top too), since it comes out about five inches too big after I go into doing it in the round, I think I will put ribbing around the bottom of it.

Am trying to figure out another project. A friend of mine has a short (as in cropped and sleeves) sweater WITH A SCARF ATTACHED. It was the cutest little thing. She was all, "I wish it had longer sleeves..." Since I don't know where she gets those cute clothes, I am trying to figure out how to make something like this. Take a basic cardigan pattern and add on the scarf, I suspect.

Sewing class update

It's going well, for the most part. Once everyone got ahold of patterns (correctly sized) and fabric, people are probably somewhere around 80% done at this point, five weeks in.

I am amazed at the variance of pattern details on pajama pants. You'd think they'd be all "put in elastic, drawstring, or both" wouldn't be that different, but they are. It's very strange. Oh well, gives people some comparison, I guess. One pattern I looked at last night had you sew the elastic to the drawstring. Strangeness.

I had a surprise TA come in last night. Apparently she, like my friend who's also teaching beginning sewing in the fall, has no idea what to do with patterns because she learned to make things up from scratch. In addition to telling her the various quirks of our sewing machines (i.e. the buttonholes suck), and doing a few demos that night, I ended up walking her through how to read a pattern and pattern envelope. I'm starting to think I'd better pull my friend aside and try to give her this talk as well.

I do wonder about the methods of learning sewing-- from patterns or from scratch. Optimally, I think it'd be better to know how to do both. I like making up things from scratch with T-shirts, but I'm a lot worse at it in fabric, mainly because it's a lot more costly and frustrating if I screw up fabric. I do kind of think that they need to teach both in class if they can. I can say from my experience that just learning how to deal with patterns and instructions has taken up the entire class so far, though, and one would probably overwhelm the other.