WIP Wednesdays: Anna Karenina

So this blanket is named after the book.  The interminable, never-ending book.  I started it while reading Anna Karenina... almost a year and a half ago (!!)

I finally cheated and finished reading the book on iBooks.  The blanket?  She remains.  Linen stitch takes forever, yo.  I don't really intend to finish this blanket any time soon; maybe next winter or the one after?  As new yarns find their way into the scrap pile it changes the look.  Of course, the look of this blanket will always be a crazy hodpodge of everything but the kitchen sink.  But that's what I love about it.

A very unhappy baby for scale.  You'd probably be unhappy too if somebody interrupted your playing to lay you down on a blanket and take pictures!  This blanket is about 3 feet (yes I measured it which means, basically, baby girl is HUGE!) so it's about halfway done.  I had to set it aside during summer but now that the weather's cooled off there's no better knitting project than a big, heavy half of a blanket you can curl up under while knitting =)

What are you working on now that there's a chill in the air?  Or is summer still going strong where you live?

latvian baby blanket

I've been working diligently on the latvian baby blanket for, well, awhile...  The one thing that bothered me about the pattern was the lack of detail, or really any instructions at all, when it came to putting on the backing.  And you know what? I wanted a border, too.  Of course I know absolutely nothing about  blanket sewing (quilting?) but hey, I can sew right?  How hard can it be?  So for posterity here are a crap ton of photographs and a general outline of how I did it.

Of course I knit, I sewed, I cut.  This blanket is knit in the round and steeked, which means that everyone who asks what you're knitting looks at you like you're crazy when you say a blanket.  They look at the long skinny tube, and look at you to see if you're brandishing those knitting needles in a manner they should worry about, then they back slowly away.

But forget about those people.  You can see that in this pattern the steek stitches are purled.  Since there are quite a few all white rows I like this method because it helps keep the steek stitches distinct.  It makes it easier to see what you're doing when you get going on the sewing machine.

And from the right side.  You can't see too well but I used yellow thread for some contrast; you'll never see the steek reinforcement on the finished object anyway and it helps my sanity.  I use two lines, again for sanity.

This is the part I should've done differently.  I laid out my entire 1.5 yards of fabric.

Then laid the blanket out on top of it.  By the way, that bump in the middle is from the blanket being folded during blocking because I'm a good little knitter and block before steeking.  I had to steam the creases out, but they came right out.

I actually got down on the floor with the iron and steam blocked the blanket to have straighter edges.  What I should've done was cut the fabric to some predetermined dimensions and then steam blocked the blanket to those dimensions.  Unfortunately I didn't think about it until it was far too late.

I pinned the edges together and cut the fabric to size.  Ignore the pin in the picture, after I took it I went through and repinned the edges the normal way with pins perpendicular.  Since it's knit I used a zigzag stitch, due more to habit than any better reason.

As I stated, I wanted a border.  I actually went and bought a fat bias tape maker (I think it's called quilt binding?) as I already had the perfect fabric in stock.  It's a thrifted sheet and the only upcycled material in this entire blanket.  I feel like things either end up being all new or all upcycled, so here's to bucking the trend.  I pinned and sewed along the crease..

This is a horrible depiction of how I did the corners.  I basically sewed up to where I wanted the corner to turn and backstitched then moved that big fold of fabric around and started sewing again, pretty much picking up in the same spot.  After you sew and press and fold the binding around to the other side it should look pretty much like this:

Once all the seams were sewn I folded over the binding, pressed, and pinned.

 

Tucking in the excess on the corners is a bit easier on this side, and they should look like this:

Daunting as it was, I then slipstitched the binding all the way around.  That took the better part of my time at home yesterday.  Of course we also went to the zoo and made cookies and did some other stuff, so I'm satisfied with that.  In fact, it wasn't nearly as horrible as I expected.

The finished blanket in all it's glory =)  It takes more than wrinkles to get me down on the floor at all of 35 week pregnant, so pardon the sad looking pics.  It's pretty awesome in real life (though I may be biased somewhat).

How unbearably cute is that fabric?  It's got little owls and other birdies in bright colors all over it.  I have enough extra to do a matching baby dress.  I wish I had enough to make a, well, a something for myself but the pragmatic side of my brain has (fortunately) persuaded me against it.  But still...  can a grown up wear rainbow bird clothing?  A dress perhaps?  Or a top?  Shorts?  Or is this overly cutesy print only appropriate for pajama pants at best?

defeat and victory: small things

Do you ever have one of those days where you just get cocky?  This is why they teach you the word hubris in high school I think...

Last night I walked to the store, took DC to the playground, made a delicious, nutritious dinner everyone enjoyed, and fixed the backed up drain (with liquid plumber, but still, I plumbed, people!).

This morning I finished knitting the Latvian Baby Blanket as well as sewing the neverending baby dress.  I don't know why, but that dress just took so much longer than it should have.

Check out the contrasting patterned piping.  I made that!  It was my first time making and using piping-- of course that's part of what took so damn long.  It isn't cut on the bias though.. I just used a little scrap of fabric and a short piece of acrylic yarn that were lying about.  The piping doesn't go around any corners or curves anyway.

I was determined to finish the dress so I could sew up a pair of shorts for DC.  I had all the pieces cut out and just needed to start sewing.  In one unusually productive morning I managed to get the shorts almost all the way done.  This is the Little Heartbreaker Pants pattern so it's a bit time consuming, what with all the topstitching, edgestitching, understitching, and fancy seam finishes (I used all French seams, of course).

It doesn't look like much does it?  Pictures cannot do justice to the pain, the folly, the hubris =(

What you see here is what it looks like when you sew the back pieces together upside down and then sew them in like that.  Basically what you see here is so many wasted hours (I may be exaggerating, but nonetheless it's heartbreaking no?) and the result of being cocky.  I may or may not rip them out and sew them in correctly, but seriously, they're all French seams!  Is it even worth it?  Sigh...

More Sewing for Boys (and Knitting for Girls)

Spring comes late this year which means Dj is getting a lot of use out of his new pants I've made him.  The first pair were black cords I did for Kids Week Clothing Challenge Day 3 and here are the second (khakis) and third (denim) pairs. 

 Even with a smartphone and a cookie as incentive I couldn't get him to pose today.  He just ended up givin' me one a these looks:

You can almost hear him saying mo-om (the longer you can stretch that out in your head the more accurate) and rolling his eyes.  Looking forward to that by the way =P

I made the shirt too, obviously another raw edge raglan.  This one has a frog appliqued on it though!  It's only been like a decade or so since I did any needlepoint at all so I'm pretty psyched with my horribly ugly poison dart frog.  Why a frog?  He loves frogs as much as a 3 year old does anything.  When we go to the zoo he just stands and watches the frogs hop around for minutes.  For him that might as well be an hour.  He also likes to point and say frog a lot, just in case I'd forgotten that that's what we're looking at =)  Here's a closeup in case you didn't believe it.  Fortunately about 2/3 of the way through I got the hang of the stem stitch so I intend to keep practicing.  Watch out for appliques on anything and everything!

Little Heartbreaker Pants number 3 I'll admit are a bit of a bust.  They're were the most ill advised project ever.  My only consolation is that the material was a really ugly pair of pants before I got started.  At least he's so cute he can pull 'em off!

The denim was really too thick for my machine to handle more than 4 or 5 layers at a time (looks like mom was right about that), the heavy weight polyester thread I bought melted  all over as soon as it hit the frikkin iron, and the last minute patternless pockets I salvaged from the original pants do not do the backside any favors.  Not to mention they were just about impossible to actually sew on because of gripe #1 above.

In brighter news I'm over halfway done with Lizzie's baby blanket (Rav page here).  My husband took one look at it when I finished the gold/yellow section and freaked me out a bit with his negative reaction.  Fortunately the good people on Ravelry were kind enough to say some nice things and overall just remind me that my husband has no color sense at all and I should stop listening to him.  

Just kidding...  It is an unusual combination I'll admit, but I think I like it.  I'll have to get the second heart section going before I can decide, but I should be well into by tomorrow night.  The more I look at it the more I like it, though.

I already blogged about this shirt but, just, cute!

By the way, the total cost of his new clothes (2 pairs pants, one shirt) is about $5.  Some fabric for lining from Goodwill, a t-shirt, and that evil polyester thread (which btw comprises more than half the total cost!).  The two pairs of pants salvaged were free (and I do love free)!  Remembering how much we always spend on a new wardrobe for him twice a year or more it feels so good to think that despite the money going towards thread and fabric and clothes to refashion at least I'm producing something tangible and maybe we're even saving some money