Knitted Vintage Dress Experiment

I got brave and set about attacking a large project and knit a dress from a vintage pattern. I had just the pattern I wanted to try and it didn't look too complicated (don't you hate it when you tell yourself that on no other evidence than the picture??)

I had two cones of Gemini Acrylic 5ply which I thought would make an interesting contrast (besides realizing that the blue was going to run out long before I finished the whole dress. Ah well. Needs must.)  

And it was easy...too easy! 18 inches of stocking stitch which I chose to do in the round since the idea of having to do it separately twice  made me feel ill! But it seemed to go on FOREVER!! But finally I got to the end of that and started with the red for the bodice.

Now it started to look more like a dress and not an endless tube! It wasn't difficult doing the shaping for the v-neck and the armholes (had to go back to straight needles for that!) and quickly progressed through the sleeves. But that's where I finally hit some problems!

Do you see the ruffle here? It took me 5 tries to get the directions right! I'm the only one who can probably notice but the increases on one sleeve are much looser than the other sleeve. It took me a while to figure that out. And the lace just before the ruffle? That I fudged...a lot! I ended up getting a pattern from my Barbara Walkers stitch collections to find a pattern like the one I could barely see in the picture and used that. I simply couldn't get the pattern as written to make any sense at all!! But at last...I finished it!

...well, not quite...

As hard as I tried I couldn't understand the instructions for the crocheted edge that goes around the neck and ruffles. Crochet is SO not my thing and in the end I fudged this too. Or I might have been doing as I was supposed to but I just followed what the picture looked like. I also added it to the skirt because I thought it looked nicer that way.

So, huzzah!! I did it!

But there is something here you may have noticed and I didn't until I tried it on. The shoulders are hugely wide!! You'd have to be impossibly well built to be able to wear this or wearing killer shoulder pads! 

It hangs over my shoulders by about 5cms. I tried to convince myself that it wouldn't matter but it does, oh heck it does!! So it's been relegated to the naughty corner so I can cogitate on it and figure out what my best option is with it. It might have to wait till winter. It is truly horrendous trying this on in 30C heat!

But it has been a great experiment :)

Happy knitting :)

Another Seamless Shirt done!

I forgot to put up another garment for myself that I finished while I was in Canberra. I really love seamless knits and I wanted to knit something light that I could possible wear during the spring when the weather's a little iffy. So I found Silken Straw Summer Sweater by Purl Soho on Ravelry and pulled out two cones of acrylic I'd picked up at various op shops. Since both yarns where very thin (the grey one looked about 1ply!) I worked them held together which made a quite passable 4 ply yarn.

Then I got started. It's unlike most seamless shirts I've knit that it started from the bottom and finishes at the top. I modified the hem edge on the bottom and the sleeves because I hate these rolling up so I garter stitched them for about  10 rows. It grew pretty slowly for quite a while.

Then I finally got to the fun stuff while I was at Daughter's. Finished the sleeves, did the I-cord bind off around the neck line, washed, blocked and worn! Was and am so pleased with the result from two ordinary yarns that I couldn't have used alone but together made this lovely heathered grey shirt!

One yarn was light grey with a slight halo and the other one was a smooth yarn in a subdued white, almost the palest grey. And it fits which I always think is a bit of a miracle when I knit stuff because I haven't the patience to do a tension swatch and the few times I have my tension when knitting the whole garment is completely different! But there we go.

Happy Knitting :)

Look what I found!

Brianna and I went to Denmark today to do some shopping since we're having some friends over for a meal Saturday night. The pantry's pretty bare at the moment so we had to buy some provisions and definitely some meat!
But while there we went into the Denmark Co-Op. I've never been in there before. I may regret having gone in there today! Such a lot of lovely pretty things!



















We spent over $20 there!
Buttons for a top I'm knitting for Brianna.












Also a DVD cleaner that'll hopefully help us play my "Bones-Series 4" discs which are a pain to get the DVD player to read, pins, needle threader, clear plastic press studs and point protectors for knitting needles. Then we decided we DEFINITELY needed to leave before we got into real trouble!


The Red Cross Op Shop was open so, just before getting the shopping done we thought we'd just duck in and see if they had anything interesting. Were we in luck!
Brianna found a jigsaw puzzle that my Mum had and I found-the MOTHERLOAD OF CONES!!















The large cones in the peach, green and saffron are in some cotton blend because when I burnt some strands it didn't melt or smell plasticy. It kind of burned away into nothing and smelt kind of woody. It's all 3ply but I have some dress patterns and shawl and bloses as well that I'd love to have a go with this stuff! I knit up a small swatch and I'm just waiting for it to come out of the washing machine to see how it washes up. It knits lovely with such a soft drape. Aaaahhhhh.














I also got some vintage knitting patterns. In the end we donated under $20 to the Red Cross!
Then, struggling hard under the desperate compulsion to look for more op shops and try my luck, we went grocery shopping instead. It came to under $200.
But it wasn't nearly as much fun as looking through the Co-Op or Red Cross :)