Child Shorts Burda B9354

I got this pattern a couple of years ago, I try to collect nice generic sewing patterns for boys when I can. I find that there isn't a whole lot of choice in sewing for boys so when I see something that I can make a few things from that I know will be liked, it gets added to the stash. It covers a nice age range too (all the way from 6-13 years).

I ordered the linen in this pic as lockdown began back in March. I thought it might make a pair of nice shorts for the 8 year old. I didn't get around to it during that glorious weather we had and then the rain came! So I shelved the idea for a bit. The weather app on my phone kept promising me sunshine and indeed, I cut out a size 9 on a beautiful sunny afternoon that got followed by about a weeks worth of rainy days. At this point I just wanted to finish them to get them out of the way in the sewing room to be honest.

Obviously, I didn't work too hard to pattern match. I find that the kids outgrow stuff so quickly that it's better to squeeze as much out of the cloth as possible - I have enough of this linen that I could cut another pair in a couple of sizes larger when needed.  I also discovered that I have managed to mix up all the rivets/eyelets and tools that I have ever bought so .. yeah.. managed to cobble those eyelets on, after a couple of disasters, eventually.

Nothing too confusing in the pattern or instructions unless you count me forgetting to mark placement lines. I would like to make them again in the future.

Notes: 

- I added a cuff of a couple of inches that is currently half turned up and reaches just above the knee. 

- I left off the extra side pocket with flap.

- They fit nicely.

Making a birthday present

This is 200g worth of 4 ply weight merino and nylon sock yarn that I have dyed myself as a gift for my mother.

I chose to dye commercially spun for her since it will probably be easier for her to put this stuff to use over my handspun. It is superwash, which I really appreciated whilst dying it because I could turn it over and move it around and really build up a lot of colour in there. believe it or not the first colour was a full bath of peach! I moved from peach and yellow to adding green and blue and ended up at this forest green with ochre, burgundy, teal and gold running through it. It has a lot of depth. I'm not sure I would be able to achieve that on roving because of the felting fear! I had thought to go all the way into the blue spectrum but I stopped here mostly because I thought it looked cool and didn't want to go too far and ruin it (I am a more is more person so this took a good deal of willpower).

I'm going to wrap them in some little Happy Birthday labels so it looks 'pro'. Hope she likes it!

I framed my Northern Lights weaving!

It's in a frame and in pride of place on the living room wall! My husband hung it, so that means he likes it too. :)

The weft is all handspun by me, made on my 24" Ashford rigid heddle loom. My teen had a spare A1 sized frame we got from Ikea years ago so I thought I would try stretching the weaving over the perspex so that the textile wasn't covered and I think it looks great! It could do with being a *little* deeper to accommodate the thick fabric where it built up in the corners, but not bad for making do with what we have.

I promise it's not crooked, it's just my atrocious photography skills! I don't think I ever ever put anything I've made on the wall before - feeling very proud of it. I love how there are pops of really rich contrasting colours but when you look at them as a whole, there's almost a picture there.

I have another weaving on the loom at the minute, inspired by all the boho type weavings that float around on pinterest. I'll share some photos of it once there's a little more work in it.

More Masks

Loads of em...

With the new regulations coming in I had family asking if I wouldn't mind making a few so I took the opportunity to make more for this household too, and some to spare for the times when I get asked if I might sew one up quickly for people.

There are 24 in the pic and a further 3 already flew their way into my teenagers wardrobe. I hope that this will be my last large batch now. I expect to be making a few here and there as they get worn out but that's OK. Back at the start of the pandemic I was making masks to my own design (I still have my drawings where I was working everything out) but now there are lots of easy to use patterns and ideas rolling around on the internet. I like the shaped ones at Big Community Sew now, the pattern is straight foward and encourages the use of things that you already have to hand. I use 2 layers of quilting cotton that I pre-wash at 60 degrees and I make the ear loops out of 5mm flat elastic. I do add a wire because we all wear glasses, I use a zigzag stitch to attach a long garden twist wire onto the top seam allowance and that works really well. No huffed up lenses in my house!

I do find that the child sized mask comes up really small though, my 8 year old prefers to wear a non-wired adult sized one.

Surf coloured fluff via low immersion dyeing

Even more dyeing. I'm so sorry - I think I'm developing a bit of a problem. My wool delivery came so I couldn't wait to break into it. First up is 100% Falkland wool and a Blue Faced Leicester and Seacell blend (I loved how the last one came out so I ordered more to play with). Both braids were 100g.

Once the wool was prepped and added to the dye bath I poured over a left over sea green I mixed for the super secret birthday yarn I have already dyed but can't share yet. I let that soak in for a bit then added a cobalt blue and some grape coloured dye. I noticed that it took a really long time to exhaust the dye this time, but I think it's because I made a bit of a boo-boo with making the acid bath (forgot to add the vinegar til the wool was already in there) so my ph wasn't quite where it needed to be. I gave up trying to exhaust the bath on the heat but it did clear once I took it off the burners - I think it just needed more time?

On the Falkland this made an almost lavender shaded mix of lovely blues and as it dried it fluffed up beautifully. The BFL/Seacell blend is stupidly beautiful. It reminds me of the surf in Cornwall. It held the sea green really well and it shifts through the grapey purple and bright blues really subtly. The white seacell makes this colourway really something else, it perfectly mimics the foam on the ocean. I am in love with it!

This weeks spinning and dyeing

This weeks spinning project was to spin and set the seacell half of last weeks dyeing..

It ended up about DK weight (thick and thin, here and there). I split the roving in half lengthwise to make 2 singles, the seacell gave them a beautiful sheen. I plied them together with more twist than I would normally and I've ended up with quite long runs of colour giving me quite a subtle barber pole effect overall, which I like. The seacell has made the whole skein pearlescent like the inside of a seashell which is an interesting finish when you consider that it comes from seaweed.

I had time to dye 2 more 100g pieces of roving this week. One falkland and one a merino and tencel mix. I had them both in the same pot using much the same techniques as last week because it went so well.

I started by going for an aqua and pink bath with the idea of big patches of black in it. I haven't yet been brave enough to try the black dye because I think when you add black to something it really mutes it down, or goes too dark. I exhausted the dye bath and added some patches of dark grey.

Well, it did mute it down, but there are pops of the original pink and aqua in there though it is subtle. I think they look like storms. Especially where the tencel has refused the dye in the merino blend - it looks like little forks of lightning.

There's always the fear that you have managed to felt yourself some impressively dyed sausages but they have both fluffed up very well and should draft fine. I'm really looking forward to spinning one of them in the week to come and i am impressed with the changes in the colour. I am feeling like I get more enjoyment from my spinning wheel now that I am dyeing my own wool, it's more involved somehow.

I am completely out of undyed fluff now, other than about 50g of some oatmeal BFL, so I have duly ordered more, along with some superwash sock yarn so that I can try that out too!

Another Estuary Skirt

While we have 5 minutes of sunshine outside I thought I would celebrate with making a tropical maxi skirt from the Estuary pattern, after all - the pieces were still lying around.

I had some tropical fabric in my stash that I loved but would never usually be brave enough to buy and walked out of the shop without it in Birmingham last year - my husband went back and bought it for me because he thought it was 'funner than what I usually buy'! I had thought to make a jumpsuit out of it, but I think the jumpsuit thing is over?? I chose to do the in seam pockets rather than patch pockets for this because I thought the pattern might get too busy. I also had matching pink buttons in my stash waiting around from when I auditioned them for the pink version I made before.

In my hazy Sunday wisdom, I thought it would be fun to time myself and pretend I was on the sewing bee. I gave up at 88 minutes when I was just supping on another coffee after cutting out haha. I'm not made for rushing it seems.

I cut it a size smaller and it fits much better. To make it maxi I measured 35 inches from the waist seam to the hem.  Speaking of the hem, it settled really oddly so I couldn't just take up half an inch like normal - I had to do it the old fashioned way (the proper way!) and mark it all with pins and press it nicely and pin some more and uuughhhhhhh  - it was taking sooooo long!

Then I had to cut some off because it was too much to just stuff in the hem and OOPS - I cut in the wrong place! SO! After trying very hard not to lose my shit at it, it seemed that I was losing 6 inches or so off the length if I wanted a straight hem.

It's not maxi, which makes me a bit sad, but realistically it's a better length for my real life and may actually get worn. That fabric though! Loving the Hawaiian vibe. The sunshine has obviously been absent ever since it got finished but hopefully it will return.

My jury service started and I am 'on standby' meaning that I don't need to be there unless they tell me that I do. So I am probably winding down on the frenzied attempt to get some decent stuff in my wardrobe and reverting back to masks (yay? I'm so over making masks) for a bit since we need to wear them a lot more now, besides all mine seem to have migrated to other places. I'll need them for court if I end up there anyway.

Dyeing experiment #2 Low immersion and nepps.

Off the back of what I think was a highly successful foray into dyeing my own wool to spin, I decided to do some more!

In the jars above are some wool nepps that I am thinking about adding to the green I dyed last week to make a tweedy mix. The tray is an experiment in 'low immersion' dyeing with a couple of pieces of roving because I read that it MAY give me more control over where the colour goes without resorting to hand painting it. I brought it up to temperature and started pouring colours over it so that they pooled a bit.

Once dry, two days later (..where is the summer?), I ended up with.. unicorn poop, according to my children (so well bred). I think they are pretty! The top one is 100% Falkland wool and the other is Blue Faced Leicester wool blended with seacell. The seacell doesn't take the dye so its a silky white stripe running through the whole top. I am loving this whole process to be honest, it's lots easier than I thought it would be, I have surprised myself.

The nepps were steam treated in little jars til they absorbed these shockingly bright colours and after they were dry I added them to rolags made from some of the green I dyed last week. The rolags meant that the green colour came out quite heathered which is an interesting technique that I will use again.

They made for an interesting spin. However, the nepps really did end up EVERYWHERE and the yarn is still shedding them - lol. I still have a good 80g of the green left which I intend to spin as it is to make more of a feature of the colour changes.

I am toying with the idea of getting some yarn and dyeing it in a nice colour to give as a gift.

Estuary Skirt

I have spent my Sunday making the Estuary Skirt from Sew Liberated at just over knee length with the patch pockets. The fabric is this dusty rose pink stretch linen from 1st for Fabrics online. The buttons are lovely and came from eBay, and are jade green/dusty pink depending on what light you catch them in.

I have been putting this off. Probably because it's becoming increasingly likely that my jury service is cancelled due to Covid-19 so I don't really NEED the clothes for court anymore. However, I gave myself a bit of a kick up the bum because I definitely still need some stuff to wear.. and assuming we ever see some summer days again I would like to swish around in a nice pink skirt, in the sunshine - not in this never-ending mizzle and cold that's going on at the moment! (Although, the weather is making me crave knitting something, which hardly happens.)

I cut it out about a week ago to a size 24 and it's only taken a couple of hours to sew up today. The instructions were clear and easy to follow but ended with the big, big question .. 'Do I want real buttonholes? Or faux ones?' Seriously, it took about 3 hours to um and ahhh about that one. I chose faux in the end because the amount of elasticity in the waistband realistically means I will never actually USE a button. The pattern did leave button placement up to personal preference actually, which was scary and liberating all at once. I thought a 3" gap between the buttons on the main part of the skirt was enough.

I think I could have made this up in a 20 despite the measurements on the pattern (I think I would like to make a maxi version). It is quite a bit looser than I would usually wear a skirt and the fabric feels a little heavy on the waist making it feel like it may travel southwards eventually.  I will probably remedy this over the coming days by eating lots of cake. If that doesn't work I'll probably take in a couple of inches on the sides.

You can fit a ton of stuff in those pockets by the way.