Finished project: Olivette cardigan

Today I finished a cardigan that I knit entirely to match one blouse. Yes, one blouse. Last fall, I bought a lovely short-sleeved silk blouse at one of our favorite antique malls. There's one booth that is always filled with clothes that fit both Mel and I. They aren't always our style, but when they are, the odds are in our favor that they'll fit. It's really weird. I love that booth.

So I bought this blouse. I don't really wear much silk, and I don't really wear big flouncy bows. Yet this blouse is both. With polka dots thrown in to boot. It's not really that me, but I love it. The polka dots are navy, and I'm pretty sure this blouse is responsible for my navy kick. (Notice that navy is one of my palette colors in my handmade wardrobe challenge.) Only at the time I bought it, when it was already cold out, I didn't own a navy cardigan to wear with it. Now I do.

The pattern is a modern pattern, Olivette by Sandi Rosner, which is available from Twist Collective. It's knit in worsted weight, and if I hadn't put it away for over a month it would have knit up really quickly.  It's knit in one piece from the bottom up to the armholes. The only seaming is setting in the sleeves. I  modified the size to have a little bit of negative ease as I didn't plan to wear it buttoned very often, and wanted it to be fitted when worn over a dress. I find when I wear cardigans that have zero or positive ease with a dress, I look like extra short and squat.

I chose to make a few modifications. Because I wanted a bit more of a vintage feel I knit the bottom ribbing plain instead of in the cabled pattern as written, and I worked 40s style box pleat caps. Having worked some variation of that on my last three sweaters, I'm putting that technique to bed for awhile. I may still work knit shoulder pads for this cardigan, I'm not sure yet. I know the style would probably benefit from it, but I'm always kind of iffy about shoulder pads. And since it's knit in worsted weight, the seam at the top of the shoulder is already rather pronounced, so I don't really want to enhance that which a shoulder pad might do. Oh well.

(An odd thing to mention about this blouse... the peter pan collar is tacked down all the way around. I have no idea why! Hence why it's inside the cardigan and not outside in the photos. I need to bite the bullet and unpick part of it to see what's going on under there.)

I love the dark navy vintage buttons I used. I got them from Etsy. I always feel vintage buttons add that extra bit of oomph to a new cardigan, don't you think?

I did a little trick I like to do with cardigans when I have an extra button. I borrowed this idea from a few of my own vintage sweaters. I sewed a spare button onto the inside of the sweater (careful not to let the stitches show through to the public side). Now in a few years if I lose a button, I don't have to try and (likely unsuccessfully) find it. Nifty!

I would highly recommend this pattern to other knitters. It definitely has a nice vintage feel to it, and produces a cardigan that can be dressed up or down. The lace and cable pattern is easy to work and easy to memorize. I am a constant pattern tweaker and as I went along, sometimes doing my own thing, when I compared what I was doing to the pattern, I was doing the same thing. No kidding! It really was perfect.

And the sizing is generous! She includes bust sizes 37" to almost 54". And it was easier to make it a little smaller by omitting a few stitches in the stockinette portions. You could also knit it in DK weight to make it even smaller.

One thing I particularly love about the pattern is that it uses a common vintage technique for button bands, which I've worked before, but is rarely found in modern patterns. You knit the bands along with the cardigan, in 1x1 ribbing, slipping the first stitch on each row for a nice selvage (though that part isn't usually mentioned in vintage patterns, but is definitely the best way to go). This produces a lovely and tailored band that holds its shape well. Unlike bands that are picked up and knit, which is annoying in its own right, you don't run the risk of the bands flaring or puckering. And unlike bands that are knit as you go in garter stitch, these bands have no tendency to flip to the inside. It's also less fiddly than another popular vintage technique that involves sewing grosgrain ribbon on the backside to prevent flipping. So really, it's pretty much the perfect button band technique in my book!

All in all, I'm very happy with this cardigan. It should be a great staple that will be useful in winter, spring and fall. But after three worsted weight sweaters in a row, I'm really ready for some finer yarn! Thank goodness for the knit-along. I got my yarn in the mail yesterday (yay!), so expect my post about swatching tomorrow or over the weekend.

And hey—one day into my challenge and I have my first garment complete. Sure, it was a bit of a coincidence, but no one needs to know that... oh wait... guess I shouldn't have said that out loud. ;)

My handmade vintage wardrobe challenge 2011

It's really time I sat down and thought about my wardrobe.

I'm not participating in the Colette Spring Palette Challenge, but it's really had me thinking a great deal about my clothing and accessories and the colors I pick. While I wasn't able to commit to the challenge in the time frame as set (plus I would want to include knitting, naturally), it's really inspired me to think about what I'd like out of my own self-made additions to my wardrobe over the next several months. With little baby steps, I'm already feeling more confident in February about my sewing than I did in January, and I'd like to hope this upward trend will continue through the spring and summer. The fact that I am even contemplating posting sewing-related goals simultaneously fills me with terror and excites me.

I'm giving myself a challenge. I plan to...

1) Focus on a color palette.

Like the Spring Palette Challenge, I'd like to narrow down my color palette. In part because it seems like a fun challenge, in part because if I approach this willy nilly, I'm going to end up with a bunch of things that don't go with anything else, and they will just hang in the closet. I'm really good at getting carried away, so this will reign me in.

I've been giving colors a ton of thought. I'm not picking only springlike or summery colors because I'd like my wardrobe to function year-round. A light blouse gets winter wear with a cardigan. A beret gets Spring wear during cool nights camping.

My palette choices for my challenge will focus on: navy, coral, ivory, ruby red, butterscotch, and sky blue.

I've always loved how vintage patterns and magazines talk about thoughtfully pairing colors and items together in smart combinations, so I will use this as my foundation. I spent a long time focusing down these colors. I feel many are represented frequently in vintage fashions, and they play well with each other. Plus all are colors I've been loving lately and most are far under-represented in my current wardrobe.

Some inspirations around Etsy in my palette...

Clockwise from upper left: polka dot dress, Bakelite bangles, coral blouse, daisy necklace, red pumps, ivory beaded purse


2) Think about what I need/would like to sew and knit as it relates to my wardrobe.

Things I absolutely need: dresses; sleeveless or short-sleeved blouses; at least 2 heavier weight cardigans; at least 2 lightweight cardigans (which will not be ivory, see my ivory sweaters post), at least 1 short-sleeved sweater

Things I would really like: at least 2 skirts; at least 2 simple blouses that would be extra comfy for outdoor activities like hiking and camping (no darts, not too fitted, etc); gray fingerless gloves and beret to match one of my Pendleton jacket

If I get to them, these things would be nice too: pajamas (but this wouldn't be limited to my palette colors... I mean it's PJs after all); one sewn item to be embellished with embroidery; a modified knit turban as an ear cover only (not full-on hat)


3) Make sure each item made works with at least two other items in my wardrobe.

Anything I sew or knit must work with a minimum of two items that I either already own, am planning to buy or are planning to create during the challenge. If I knit a cardigan, it must work opened with a skirt and blouse or dress, or buttoned up with trousers or a skirt. If I sew a skirt, it must work with a blouse or sweater. This will keep me on track and hopefully will prevent any odd interlopers from entering my closet, never to be come back out.


4) Purchased clothing and accessories won't be limited to my palette colors.

I won't be limiting my purchased wardrobe items (i.e. things I am not making) to my palette colors. Because if I find a great vintage dress that fits and is the right price, no way am I turning it down because it's green. But I will attempt to make at least some of my purchases fit into the palette to round out my wardrobe, especially when accessories are concerned.


So, those are my goals for my handmade wardrobe challenge. Wow. That's a tall order for a veteran knitter/newbie sewist. I may get more specific about the numbers a bit more as I go along, to have something to aim for, but I'm content with this for now. I'm not even setting a date for myself, since I really have no idea how long it will take me to accomplish all of that. Probably through the end of summer, I'm thinking, or more likely fall. Hell, I could very well still be at it in winter. Fortunately, one of these items will be wrapped up soon (my navy worsted cardigan that's currently blocking...under my cat's butt), one will be my Briar Rose sweater for the knit-along, and I'm switching my fabric choice for my somewhat languishing project for the Swing Dress Sew-Along to a navy floral, so that will then count, too. It makes me feel like I'm off to a good start before I even knew I was starting anything, so surely that's a good sign, right?

I hereby dub this My Handmade Vintage Wardrobe Challenge 2011. If I don't name it and don't commit it to "paper", I might not do it.

Wish me luck and stay tuned throughout the year... Can this gal do it, and learn a few things along the way? And not lose her marbles? Only time will tell!


Other fashion challenges that have been inspiring me:

• Ali started up a new Fashion on the Ration challenge
• Colette Spring Pattern Challenge
• Me Made March

Friday board games

Remember on Friday I said we were going out to play board games? Indeed we did. There's no photos from Taboo, which mainly involved lots of arms flailing about, but there are a few from Pictionary. (And I did kick some butt!)

And my two favorite drawings of mine that won. Jen guessed correctly the below was "Fargo".

And Emma guessed correctly that the below was Mt. Rushmore.

I have smart friends. Those are crappy drawings. But I think that's part of the fun of Pictionary. The part that brings you to tears laughing at yourself and your game mates.

Saturday night we had a date night. Pia was grumpy that we were leaving. Can you tell?

I got a ton of knitting done this weekend on a cardigan I started over Christmas while visiting my mom and step-dad. I hadn't worked on it in awhile but realized I really wanted it for my wardrobe (and soon, since it's worsted weight and the hourglass will soon be running out of sand on worsted weight sweaters this season). I've been having some color palette inspirations rolling around in my head, thanks to the Colette Spring Palette Challenge, which I'm not participating in but I'm using it to kind of build some knitting/sewing wardrobe ideas for myself (I'll probably post more about that soon). And this cardigan fits right in. I had a lot of it completed already—the entire body up to the armholes and the left upper front. So I got the upper back and upper front right portions and 1.5 sleeves completed in the last few days. I hope to finish the second sleeve tonight and block it tonight or tomorrow. I may take some pre- and post-blocking photos to share in preparation for the knit-along, since blocking can make such a difference in not only a knitted garment itself but your morale once you realize you didn't just knit squirley looking little rumpled pieces, you actually knit pieces of something awesome.

Today is Valentine's Day. Happy Valentine's Day! We don't really celebrate it much, other than a little extra smiles and love, because our anniversary is at the end of the month. But I did get lovely artisan truffles in the mail from my Valentine.

I was greeted at work this morning with two chocolate-covered oreos. My building gives out little treats on holidays. Not a bad way to start the day!

Winter footwear

I know I'm not the only vintage lover struggling through Winter. It's a miserable season for vintage clothing and style. During the week I'm commuting in ugly but necessary winter boots. Half the time on the weekends I haven't been able to avoid them much, either. They aren't cute. They aren't stylish. They are winter boots. They keep me warm and dry, that's about all I can say for them.

I've been determined lately to step up my game a notch and break out of my trousers-and-overalls-only wardrobe. Bad time of the year to decide that, huh? I've seen a lot of dresses with tights and boots out there in the vintage blogging world, and thought I'd give it a whirl myself.  The only thing stopping me was the boots. Or lack thereof. I needed something new, something that could moderately work well with vintage clothes, and something not so expensive that if I stepped into a puddle I wouldn't want to sit on the curb and cry.

I don't even want to think about how many hours I spent on sites like Zappos and Endless in the last couple of weeks. I was looking for something with little to no heel, that maybe had a bit of a 30s or early 40s feel. Little black ankle boots. Nothing fancy. Hours and hours I looked through atrociously ugly black ankle boots, getting more and more frustrated and starting to curse why I didn't live closer to the Equator. And then I found them!

They even had an extra plus that I hadn't been expecting: a faux fur cuff that folds over. It reminded me a lot of the 1940s fur-lined boots that Fleur of Diary of a Vintage Girl posted back in December. She also showed a few pair of repro styles that were similar, but no way would they work in my climate. This pair is much more sensible. They have a rubber sole and the sides can be worn up, for a little extra warmth. They are synthetic, so I imagine they'll be fairly easy to clean off. And the inside is lined with a leopard print flannel-like fabric. Cute inside and out.

They were $42 at Endless. They also sell them in olive and brown, though sadly the brown ("Chestnut") is out of stock in my size 6 otherwise I'd snap them up too (I did look for them on other sites with no luck). I'll be giving them a test run tonight. We're meeting friends to play board games at a pub. If they work out I may very well order another black pair to keep stored for when I wear these out, so I don't have to go through this entire ordeal again anytime soon.

I'm all set in my outfit for tonight. I'm wearing a vintage shirtwaist dress I've never worn before, in pale gray, green and pink plaid, with a bit of darker machine embroidery as one of the plaid stripes.

The sweater is one a friend recently knit me. I adore it. It's a longer length, like some of the cardigans I've seen pop up occasionally in my stash of knitting pattern booklets from the 1940s. It was knit from yarn in my stash that I sent her. I initially spent forever trying to decide on a color, and finally just picked this to get it over with. I regretted it for awhile, thinking it wasn't a color that would fit into my wardrobe well, but when I got the finished sweater I was totally wrong. It goes with so much!

Here's what my hair looks like from the back. I really need a few more wide barrettes as I've been wearing my hair like this a lot. That's a handmade wooden one I got on Etsy.

It might look a little odd that I'm carrying a yellow purse, but I think it works. Especially because of the ridiculous buttons on the dress.

That's the only thing about the dress that needs work. I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo but the buttons are just downright bizarre! I'm assume at some point in the history of this pretty little dress, a previous owner lost one or more of the buttons, so they replaced them with these strange yellow, blue, white and red plastic ones that look like they're supposed to mimic millefiori. I don't have any buttons the right size right now, and really wanted to wear the dress anyway, so I just ran with it.

 And now I'm ready to win at Pictionary tonight. I'll let you know how it goes!

Briar Rose Vintage KAL: Initial thoughts on resizing, modifications

I hope you've all been thinking about yarn! I made my final decision. I'll be knitting my sweater in ivory, and ordered KnitPicks Comfy yarn. It's mostly pima cotton with a bit of acrylic, and should be perfect for Spring and early Summer wear.

In this installment, I just want to touch briefly on a couple of topics we'll focus on as we go along. One that may apply to some of you: making modifications. One that will probably apply to many of you: resizing the pattern.

Thinking about pattern modifications

You certainly don't have to make any final decisions about what modifications you might like to make to the pattern. Hell, sometimes I'm halfway through a sweater before I decide to tweak something. Case in point my current sweater. During the course of a few days I changed my mind how I was going to work the sleeves twice.

If you're planning to make a big change like knit long sleeves instead of short, make sure you take that into consideration when you estimate yardage. But for small changes, just start kicking ideas around in your head. Do you want to omit the collar? Make two pockets, or none at all? Make the ribbing a little longer, or shorter? The sky is really the limit here. I don't plan to make a lot of modifications to the pattern myself so that I can walk you through as many of the steps as written as possible, but I'm happy to help anyone out who'd like to try and change something.

Initial thoughts on resizing

Resizing this pattern is going to take some effort, but everyone can do it, no matter your shape or size.

Before I go further, though, I had a thought that occurred to me that I hadn't mentioned yet in relation to resizing. If you've previously knit a basic stockinette sweater that you like the fit of, by all means, feel free to use that pattern as your base to build off of! Because essentially, Briar Rose is just a short-sleeved stockinette sweater with a collar, pocket and fancy sleeve caps. You could put that collar and pocket on any pattern, really, and shaping the sleeve caps would be all you have left to tweak. Just something else to think about, if the prospect of resizing seems daunting or if you've already done half the work by knitting a similar sweater in the past. I frequently combine elements from multiple patterns to achieve a similar look, and when we get into resizing, I'll go over a couple of examples of resizing that I've done, including one subtle example and one dramatic example.

I'm giving you two week's warning that resizing is going to involve math, so get ready! But I promise, just like when estimating yardage, it really will be pretty basic. I'm not a knitwear designer and don't have software to help do the work for me, so this will all be built on the basic shape of our own body. No algorithms, nothing like that. Just using simple arithmetic, along with knowing our gauge (which we'll work on next week) and our body measurements will get us there.

Just to give you a little taste, take a look at the image below of the shell of an inverted trapezoid style sweater, and it's the basic shape of our vintage pattern.

One of the primary ways we can resize our vintage pattern is by breaking it down into basic parts. The above is just my first pass at how we'll be breaking down the sweater. (Let's just get it out there in the open now: I suck at drawing. So you'll have to forgive my crude pictures.) For those of you who sew, you probably won't find it much different than grading sewing patterns up or down. For those of you who don't sew, don't worry. You really don't need any background in anything to do this.

What do you need, then?

Here are the supplies. It's really easy.

A calculator, a pen or pencil, a piece of paper, a ruler, and a comfortable chair, because it may take a little while.

A good beer is optional.

Last thoughts for the day

As an FYI, I'm starting to post the subject of each KAL post in my sidebar on the right, for easier access to each topic as we go along. I hope that will be helpful!

And... don't forget to order your yarn! We start swatching next week. In order to do that, you'll need to estimate your yardage. Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Have a great weekend!

Ivory sweaters

I've been trying to decide what color and brand of yarn I'd like to use for the Briar Rose Knit-Along. And I've come to a decision on color. Well, it's sort of a color. Potential stains be damned, I'm going with: ivory.

Because I really need a versatile short-sleeved sweater. And apparently, ivory is a good go-to color for me. As I sat thinking about colors, I said to myself, "Yes, I have a vintage ivory cardigan, for the same reason. This is a good idea."

"Actually, I have two ivory cardigans."

"Oh... actually, I have four ivory cardigans."

Yes, there they are, hanging in my closet, sandwiched between a yellow cardigan on the right and a probably-60s-era stranded yoke ski pullover on the left. (And yes I admit, I do hang most of my sweaters for lack of drawer space, but I don't hang my hand knitted ones.) Each is similar yet different, all with their own perfect uses.

The bottom one has a completely sequined yoke, so it's really only for fancier occasions. The next one up is actually a shrug, and gets the most use out of them all (and is a batwing shape that my friend Elisa and I have studied so we can knit a similar one someday). The one on top of that is a lovely beaded one that works nicely over blouses or buttoned all the way up. And the top one of the bunch is also beaded, but a tighter fit, so it goes well over dresses without making me look dumpy.

I know I'm not alone out there with multiples of wardrobe favorites. Fess up! What do you have multiples of (and for very good reasons as well, naturally) in your closet?