Stash Avalanche

May Giveaway - bag

Yay! it's a Giveaway!

Ok, so this giveaway is a crochet bag. Last year's giveaway was a bag so I thought I'd try to start a StashAvalanche tradition.

This time it's the crochet bag I made last summer. You can read about it in detail here. It's an enormous cotton bag with a draw string and two internal pockets which would be perfect for a trip to the beach or the park. It's a great bag but I have an entire cupboard full of bags so this one deserves a home where it will actually get used!

Here's what you have to do to be in with a chance of winning. Leave me a comment by midnight on the 25th of May - that's next Wednesday, and I will pick a winner using random.org. Say something nice, tell me a bad joke, give me baby advice... whatever you like so long as it's not offensive.

Good luck!

Oops! I forgot to say: yes, I will post internationally and when I say midnight, I mean midnight UK/Irish time.

COMMENTS ARE NOW CLOSED.

 

May Giveaway - the giveaways!

Foof! I finally made it to the Giveaway posts. Time for a celebratory cup of tea while I tell you all about it...

It's Sew Mama Sew's May Giveaway time and call me crazy but I have four for you.

Here's what you have to do. Go look at the giveaway posts, decide if you want anything, leave me a comment (you can comment on all of them if you like) and do it by midnight on the 25th of May - that's next Wednesday. I'll pick winners using random.org and put everything in the post by the following Wednesday. Oh and I will ship internationally so wherever you are, do join in.

If you're not interested in what I am giving away, there will be plenty more to choose from. Last year it took me 4 days to get through all the links, and I'm betting that there will be even more this year.

The items are a scarf, some vintage yarn, a bag and a babygrow.

Have fun!

Not really a tutorial for a holiday laundry bag

What do you do with your dirty clothes when you go away? I used to put them in a carrier bag - potentially stinky - then I started using a cloth bag (probably from Aldi), then I made a holiday laundry bag.

I had a cloth bag that had ripped at the top which was the ideal candidate for re-purposing, although you could just as well use an old pillow case or grab a rectangle of fabric and sew it up to make a bag.

I had a scrap of Kaffe Fassett fabric which I ironed onto a bit of Bondaweb and then cut into shapes. I arranged these on the bag (although you could hardly call this arranging) and ironed them on, then zigzagged round the edges. I did this on both sides.

I made two button holes in the middle of one side about an inch from the top and then folded the top over and sewed it shut to make a casing for a drawstring.

 

And that was it.

Except that every time I went away I had to hang it from the drawstring and then pull the top open to put things in. So I had a minor brainwave and sewed two loops, one at the top of each side seam. Now I can hang the bag from a clothes hanger and it stays open until I take it off, pull the drawstring shut and put it in my case to go home.

 

I sewed them downwards so that they tuck into the bag when it's closed.

The moral of this story: sometimes even the simplest things take time to percolate through to the front of my brain, but when they do, they work out very well indeed!

Of course, if I hadn't needed all this brain percolation, and I'd known at the time that the finished item was going to end up photographed on a blog for the whole world to see, I would have been neater, and used matching threads, and incorporated the ends of the coat-hanger loops into the drawstring casing, but you can't have everything.

The bag...

Well, I finally finished my Attic24-style bag, and I feel like a weight has been lifted. Phew!

What started out as some CSI time crocheting managed to turn into a bit of an ordeal, but I probably only have myself to blame.

Just to recap, this bag is made with cotton DK that I bought from John Lewis (their own Jonelle brand) some time in the 80s. It's been knitted and pulled out and reknitted nearly ad infinitum so it was only right to do something else with it :¬)  The natural and icy blue are Jonelle colourways, and the red was an evolution of Dylon dyes which I talked about here.

I admit I wanted it to be a big bag but somehow it grew and grew, and then (fortunately) I ran out of the natural coloured cotton. I'd wanted to do a couple of rows of decrease before I stopped but because I ran out of yarn so suddenly (aka not paying attention, ahem) that didn't happen.

 

I haven't measured it, but I reckon it's about 20" across laid out flat. Well, it will certainly be a high capacity bag!

I decided to use a webbing strap rather than a crochet one as I don't think they're very robust, and with previous (much smaller) bags I've made, I find they stretch. I also wanted to machine stitch the strap on in a strap/bag/reinforcing piece of calico sandwich, but I couldn't get all that thickness under my presser foot, so I hand sewed it on.

 

The front looks passable, just don't ask to see the back! When I am rich and famous, and have a swanky new sewing machine, I'll sew them on properly... (yeah like, in my dreams...)

Big bags are great for carrying lots in, but they're also great at losing small things like purses and phones, so I added a couple of inside pockets.

 

I crocheted the big pocket as a separate piece and sewed it on, and the smaller phone pocket, which you can see a bit of under the right side of the strap, was done by sewing a line of chain stitches on the inside of the bag, then picking them up with the crochet hook and crocheting up from there. There didn't seem to be much difference in the result or the neatness, so I think future pockets like these will be done separately - being attached to the bag as I crocheted made the phone pocket a bit of a fiddle, although nothing too dramatic.

 

Because the bag was so big (which made for a rather gaping opening), I decided to put a cord through the top row of crochet to make it a bit more close-able. I tried a kind of crochet i-cord but although it looked nice, it was too lumpy to pull smoothly through the crochet. Then I tried to knit an i-cord (my first attempt) and found that I couldn't get a tight enough tension on the first stitch of each row, so one side looked fine, and the other side looked like a miniature pair of laddered tights! Having never tried to knit i-cord before, it might have been my technique, but I also suspect that i-cords work better with a yarn that has a bit of stretch to it, like wool; this Jonelle yarn doesn't have any stretch at all.

So then I tried inventing a kind of flat crocheted ribbon using single crochet and crocheting back into each previous stitch, and that finally worked out. I wanted to use flowers as cord stops, to stop the cord accidentally being pulled out, so I made these two using a pattern from Lacy Crochet, a book which I bought a couple of months ago and have been meaning to do a few things from so that I can do a First Impressions post. They crocheted up really quickly which I was eating my lunch today, so it would be easy to make more and stitch them onto the bag Attic24-style.

I wouldn't say that anything was particularly difficult, but the process seemed to drag on, and get more and more unwieldy, but as I said, I should have planned and paid better attention, and then perhaps things would have turned out a bit more positively.

So, that's the bag. Right now, I feel completely drained by it. And you can probably tell; this is not the perkiest of posts, is it? But I'm hoping that now it's done and I can walk away from it for a while, it will grow on me.

And to take my mind off it, I have some lovely Rowan Wool Cotton which I have been waiting ages for, to continue a blanket I started in February or somewhen ages ago.

 

I already feel jollier just telling you about them! The blue is shade 941, the pale green is 901 and the grassy green is 946. I only got one ball each to start off and see how the blanket turns out (I also haven't decided how big I want it to be yet) but I can already tell you that grassy green is going to be a prominent feature - I really love it, it has a bouncy optimism to it.

I'll do a bit tonight hopefully and show you in a day or two. Woolly green cheerfulness, here I come...

Not another one?

I feel a bit embarrassed to tell you this. You might think I'm some kind of obsessive. You might be right.

I made another Burda dress. Is that really bad? It's not like I didn't have other stuff to do to, like Life, but I made it anyway.

I had a mildly important do to go to and I decided the yellow dress wasn't quite right. So I thought I'd make a quickie dark blue version (calico dyed with a dylon dye) but I parked on a double yellow and rushed into the LFS to be told they were out of calico so I had to choose something quick in case a traffic warden strolled past. There was a shelf full of summer polycottons and the grey kind of waved at me, so I thought what the heck, and bought some. Rash I know. I can be a bit ditzy like that sometimes.

Here's what happened.

A variation happened. Sans ironing but we'll brush over that. Actually the colour looks best in the photo above, but the one below is a bit more styled (after all a grey wall with a grey dress is just a bit too grey, y'know?).

It's the same Burda pattern as the yellow one with a few minor alterations:

• I lengthened the skirt by 6" and took up a 2" hem (the yellow one has a 1" hem)
• I lined the skirt with pink polycotton (attaching it to the skirt before sewing on the bodice) to counteract some of the slightly see-through nature of the fabric
• I omitted the ties under the bust and replaced them with elastic (but only really because I don't have a buttonhole function on my Elna and I am totally useless at doing them freehand, and crappy black buttonholes look a lot more obvious than pale yellow ones!)
• I added an inch across the front and the back so that the dress fits me now and not in 6 weeks time
• I added the pocket to take away some of the severity/plain-ness of the finished dress

Did I wear the dress to the do? Of course not! How hopeless is that? But it was just too flippin' hot for spending the day outside in a creased dress with the lining sticking to my legs. I think this is more of an inside dress or an office dress, but I feel pretty confident that it won't languish at the back of the wardrobe and end up at Oxfam.

I would still like to make a version of this dress with a large check like the original (and I was also thinking a not-too-bright-red tartan might look pretty great), but until I find some suitable fabric that's it for this pattern. I have however found the links to the dresses I was talking about here, and have a secret plan for some further dress making, but I think for now, I'm going to concentrate on my Attic24 bag which has grown large enough to house a small family. I think another night on the crochet and it will be nearly complete, so watch this space.

And just on the Burda links, I think I have updated all my previous posts to reflect the changes on the Burda website(s) but if you find any that I missed out, do let me know. There's nothing more annoying than a link that doesn't work.

Burda dress

Hello. Better weather today so I can finally add photos to this post. Sorry it's all been a bit quiet on the blogging front this week, Life has kind of taken over and made me rather preoccupied with other things. However, the crafty-ness didn't disappear entirely, so here's what I spent most of my (sewing) time on last week...

...a Burda dress. In fact the Burda dress I was ogling at a couple of weeks ago from the Burda Style May 2009 magazine. And I finally got an excuse to use the lovely yellow gingham that I lined my Mayday Giveaway bag with. The bolt had been waving at me in my LFS for ages and I was finally able to buy with a purpose.

Apart from the fact that it only just fits ( I still need to lose a bit more weight), I'm really pleased with it. I have to say that cutting out the pattern took ages because cutting checks on the bias for the skirt was more of a fiddle than I imagined. In the end, I marked the centre line on the fabric and lined up the centre seams with that, then drew round the pattern and flipped it over to draw round the other (mirrored) half, then cut the piece out using my drawn-on outlines; normally I would just pin the pattern on, cut round it and be done with it, but I found my new way didn't take much longer and I got perfect bias checks for my effort.

I do have a gripe though. Well, it wouldn't really be me if I didn't, would it? The pattern calls for 2.75m/ 3 1/8 yds of 125cm/49" wide fabric. This gingham is about 34cm/ 53" wide and I got the full length to take cutting bias pieces into account but I ended up with a good metre left over. I'm always happy to allow a bit of leeway it comes to getting enough fabric to cut things on a bias but I think a whole metre extra is ridiculous. Actually, more than that, I think the way the pattern pieces are shown laid out in the magazine is a joke - there's about a good foot's distance between each piece - it's a complete waste of fabric and money. This is an issue that has irritated me for years but really, this dress really is the worst!!!

Anyway, enough grumping. Back to the dress. I pretty much followed the instructions as written (no tweaks on my part) and worked to a size 42 (UK16) because this was the largest pattern size and I was starting to think the 44 was getting a bit large (I need to take in my Danielles, especially the dress!). But in the end I moved the skirt seams out to provide a bit more leeway when sitting down!

The instructions for the top of the back closure (invisible zip) were a bit vague, and seeing as there is elastic in the neck, I decided to add a button to the top just so the zip wouldn't pull open. It's a bit rustic, but I see this dress as a kind of farmer's-daughter-on-her-day-off dress so I think it's pretty appropriate.

I really like the pattern and I think I will make this dress again, in some fancier plaid if I can find some (so probably not here in Ireland!) and a solid colour... I'm thinking that Dylon Jeans Blue I used for one of my Danielle tops would work nicely, so roll on more Bomull! And I think it would be interesting to make this in a heavy-ish jersey too. And... (only one more and), don't you think it would make a lovely top?

And speaking of dresses becoming tops, I got an email newsletter through from Onion yesterday and they have some new patterns on their website, one of which is this raglan sleeved dress...

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?  Like, tunic-thinking? It comes with English instructions so don't hold back! I think it's going on my mental Must Have List.

In other crafting news, the Attic24 bag has had some CSI action time on it in the evenings and having previously said I think I might have yarn left over, I'm now starting to think I won't have enough! I suppose I didn't help myself when I made the base so enormous - I just measured it and it's 42cm/ 16½" across! I ws going to use up the red and white and use some blue (also from the back of the cupboard) for the top if necessary, but thinking about it last night, I decided to add a wider blue and white stripe into the middle for a bit of interest instead. The blue is a bit icy but I hope it will turn out ok in the end.

 

Ooooh, and do you like these?

I got them from CitrusPop, Toni Coward's (of Make It Perfect) new Etsy shop. I have been wearing them pretty much non-stop since they arrived and really love them - pretty but not cloyingly girlie. What's not to love!

Quietly being busy

You might get the impression from recent posts that I haven't been doing much sewing lately, and it's true there's currently nothing major on the go, but I have been doing a few odds and ends interspersed with trying to work on my course which was rather neglected during my recent tunic adventures.

You might remember I finally got round to dyeing the Simplicity top a week or so ago, and on Saturday I managed to finally sew on the roses and a button, so it's now officially wearable.

 

(please excuse the fierce expression, it was raining).

I'm not entirely sure about the colour, and I think it could have done with another rose or two towards the shoulder seam, but apart from that, I'm reasonably happy. The pattern version has roses all the same size (as my large ones) and sewn on symmetrically around the scoop of the neck, but that didn't really do it for me. By the way, please don't, under any circumstances, ask to see how I sewed the roses on - they look terrible. If you're going to make a top like this for anyone other than yourself (and maybe yourself too), use facings (I used bias binding round the neck) and hide the stitches!

When I was dyeing the top, I also dyed some cotton DK yarn found in the back of a cupboard. Well, whilst the colour (Dylon's Burlesque Red) looks ok on the top, I decided that it just wasn't distinctive enough to show up as anything other than a muddy maybe-brown when used as a narrow stripe (probably due in part to using too much fabric to too little dye and therefore diluting the colour too much). So I over-dyed it with Dylon's Tulip Red, a much more vibrant colour and got a much better result.

I know the focus is a bit crappy (and strangely the colours are all a bit too bright and blue although they were alright in PhotoShop), but you get the idea? 

So I'm three quarters round the base of the Attic24 style bag and it's looking pretty good so far...

That's a much better colour!

I think I will have quite a lot of yarn left over so if that happens I shall do a giant granny-square-cum-baby blanket type thing with the leftovers. Enough to keep me going through a few more CSIs at any rate!

I am having one problem though. Do you see how the colour of the previous row peeks through when I change colour?

 

I don't know if it's me or the yarn or what. Because I'm only working with two colours, I'm not breaking the thread with every colour change, just carrying the yarn up to the next stripe, so perhaps that's causing the problem.

I'm also still working on what I now think of as my Shreddies granny squares, and I'm slowly formulating an idea for a cafe curtain, but I'm about to run out of crochet cotton so that will all take a while to come to anything worth posting.

And I have finally got round to finishing lowering the waist on my first pair of Burda trousers, which I unpicked about 8 weeks ago and then they sat, folded neatly, on an armchair until Saturday. Er... perhaps I shouldn't have admitted to that. Ahem, anyway, I'm back on track with them now. They won't be perfect, and the waist will still be quite high (because I can't be arsed to take the zip out so I can only lower the waistband by about 4cm before I start having fiddly encounters with zip teeth) but they'll be better and I'll feel less like I'm wearing empire-line trousers. By the way, isn't it funny how the US version of What Not To Wear pronounces it om-peer and not em-pie-er. Makes me smile anyway.

So you see, quietly busy.

Kaftan sabbatical

Hello there! It feels like I haven't posted anything for ages but it was only Saturday.

I've decided to have a bit of time off from kaftans and tunics for the moment. After three unsuccessful attempts I think I really need to understand how patterns are cut and altered before I go any further. I do have a couple of other patterns up my sleeve but everything has been put to one side for the moment.

Instead, I'm going to review the lists I made a while back (here and here) and add a couple more, in the hope that there is a new project in the offing...

First up is June's Prima magazine, which has a pattern for three variations of a lovely simple top.

(click on the image for a bigger version)

Alright, alright, it's nearly a tunic-y-type top, but I like it nonetheless so I shall give it a go (probably the short sleeved version, but the long sleeved t-shirty variation also shouts at me). I'll have a while to decide because it could take up to three weeks to arrive, but that's ok. Oh and if you would like a copy of the pattern yourself (and you live in the UK or Ireland) you've got until the end of this month to order one.

Moving on from Prima, I bought the Burda magazine from May 2009 on Ebay and it arrived a couple of days ago. The nice thing about Burda is that you can preview all their previous editions on their website, so if you see a magazine on offer on Ebay, you can check whether there are any patterns you like before you bid. Hmm, although having said that, the burdafashion.com site seems to be defaulting to the burdastyle.com page at the moment, so I don't know what's going on there. I'll update this post if things improve.

Ah, this might partially explain it. It appears that BurdaStyle is now offering patterns from BurdaFashion (ie. the magazine website). But that doesn't explain what has happened to the magazine front page or archive. Well, I'll keep a watch on it and let you know*.

Anyhoo, back to the Burda June May 2009 magazine. I have my eye on these ...

...a crossed front top in jersey...

... this lovely yoked top (love that check!), although admittedly it is very similar to the Prima top...

... this jersey dress - I'll just need the figure to go with it!

... and this lovely bias-skirted dress. This is most certainly my next sewing project, and I have a mind to do a trial run in the same yellow gingham that I used for the inside of my May Giveaway bag. I've been itching to make some clothing in that fabric ever since I saw it.

I've also been doing a bit of non-sewing crafting as well. Making more granny squares, this time in a fine crochet cotton. Not sure whether they will become a cropped jacket-type cardigan (Lucy at Attic24 got me thinking about that) or a cot cover or a window screen, but they keep my fingers busy during CSI.

The yarn is rather wiry and fiddly to use (although I'm sure it would soften up a bit with wear), and I often feel like a Nana knitting Shreddies when I work with it. (For those of you who don't get British telly and haven't got a clue what I'm on about, have a look here).

So I have a second plan for CSI. Long, long, long, long, long ago (like when I was about 14) I bought a load of natural DK cotton from our local John Lewis. It's been knitted up and worn and pulled out and knitted up again (and probably a few times more), and I discovered it yet again in the back of a cupboard a while ago. I decided to dye some of it along with my Simplicity top and crochet an Attic24-type bag in red(-ish) and white stripes. It is very soft and will be a nice change from knitting breakfast cereals.

I was going to do a dye how-to but my camera battery gave up before I had even taken the first shot, so all I can show you is the (nearly) final result. Still on the washing line and taken just now...

This is Dylon's Burlesque Red, which looked rather grape coloured when I made up the dye, but the colour is a bit diluted as I used more than the recommended weight of fabric (maybe 400g instead of 250g). I was  worried that I wouldn't like the colour (having never used it before) but I think it's turned out pretty ok. I'll see what it's like when it's dry, and post a photo of the finished top complete with roses.

I'm off to get out the greaseproof paper and start to trace off the Burda dress.

Happy Tuesday!

* Burda update 03-06-10:  It looks like they're amalgamating the two sites for the english version. Read more here

Desperately seeking...

Hello. Wow, we're having summer in Ireland today. It's pretty certain that the rest of the year will be pants, but late spring seems to be the best time of the year here. It's shorts and barbeques and sunburn all round!

Today I'm wondering if you can help me. See, I was doing some gratuitious blog browsing and I came across this lovely bag on a US blog, Simply Vintage Girl, and I completely fell in love with the fabric.

(It's a much brighter green in the bag photo, and I'm hoping it's a brighter green in real life too!)

SVG said she got it at JoAnns  but of course we don't have JoAnns in Ireland. And when I sent JoAnns an email asking what it was they said it was store policy not to provide this sort of information. How customer friendly! I also asked SVG if it said anything on the selvedge but she didn't reply at all!

So I am hoping you lovely people out there might be able to help me.

Here's what I've been able to find out: it's an Alexander Henry fabric (but I can't find it on their website), and SVG got it in the Keepsake Calico section of JoAnns.

What I would like to know is this - does anyone know where I can get this on-line? The shop would have to do international delivery because the chances of this being available in Ireland are so remote as to be a gauranteed no. I have been looking, believe me, but it's either out of print or no-one I can think of sells it. 

So, does anyone have any leads?

My fingers are crossed (and all international variations). Happy Saturday!

May Giveaway winner YAY!

Thank you everyone for dropping by during May Giveaway week and leaving lots of comments. 162 comments to be exact! Lovely to hear from you all!

Also, a big thank you to Sew, Mama, Sew! for organising the whole thing. It was really exciting, and my first giveaway too - and I'll definitely be doing both again. 

Now. Down to business and over to random.org. Did you know they're based at Trinity College in Dublin? Well, neither did I!  
 
Anyway, I put in the numbers and...


... comment number 24 was from Annette who said...


Congratulations Annette, I'll be in touch very shortly.