Sage Blooms and Winter Blooms: A Tale of Two Knits

Wow!  How has it been a year???  A summer of fun in the sun, followed by months of fun in the rain and snow, and here we all are, during the crazy time that is 2020.

Once upon a time, back in November, Erica Sufka offered a test knit for her pattern, Winter Blooms Mini, and I signed right up, knowing I had other things to knit and sew, aha!!!  But it worked out, as it's one of my daughter's favorite sweaters!  Camden loves her cabled sweater, and honestly, the pattern was a relatively quick knit, whipped up in Hazel Knits Lively DK in the colorway Blueberry.  You can likely see the line where I changed colors, as I apparently chose NOT to alternate.  I have no idea how I fell into doing that, as it was back in November of 2019.  At the time, Camden was 9.75 years old, and I knit the size 8, as I figured the chest size would better suit her, and it did!

Fast forward to last month, when Erica announced she was starting a test knit for Sage Blooms, a cardigan version of the same cable pattern - yay!!!  Again, I knew I should be doing other things, but it was so pretty, and Camden was totally in the market for a new cardigan, for real!!  In this case, the pattern runs down the back, and it has a nice band around the sweater, no buttons added!  The version I knit up is a bit on the long side, aha; I'd temporarily forgotten Camden is somewhat short, and it's one of those cables where you have two different stopping point choices.  I went with the full chart repeat, rather than halfway down, when I should have done the reverse.  Because of this, I ended up knitting the sleeves long.  But... I sadly thought I'd knit the armscye long enough, and I didn't.  For this reason, the sweater might not fit as long as I'd like it to fit her.

Sad days.

But!  On a happy note, Camden picked the colorway, Glacier, on Quince and Co. Osprey.  I purchased the yarn from Twisted, a local yarn store I am sad to see closing (though I think they will continue the on-line shop).  I'm not a pale blue kind of lady, but it's her thing, and it's so lovely!  I loved the yarn a lot, but something to keep in mind with this aran-weight yarn is that it's a dense aran weight, so, at the gauge, it bothered my hands on the needles I needed to use.  I love the fabric, but whew.... my wrist and hand hurts, thinking about it, aha!

Legit - you need BOTH patterns!!!  Why???  You need them because you get to work with two different yarn weights and enjoy the pattern twice!!!  Erica includes number counts, which I always love, and the chart is an easy one!!  And I promise that if you have a kid/grandchild in your life, along with too much yarn in your stash, then these are the patterns for you!

Audrey Hepburn: A Quilt of My Friend's Very Own

This is me:  Let's buy that yard of white fabric I have needed for over a year so that I can finally get down to business on Camden's Broken Herringbone quilt.

Also me that same night:  Wow!  Thank goodness I happen to now have a yard of white fabric so that I can ALL OF A SUDDEN whip up a quilt for Elissa (of The Rarest Bird!!!), my friend!

My second quilt is officially a gift.  I surprised her with it yesterday, and I'm so glad she loves it!  I don't recall if blood, sweat and tears were involved in the making of it, but wasted fabric, rust stains and cussing were!

I figured it would at least be easy enough to use the Audrey Hepburn panels she had given me - turn them into a basic rectangles quilt.  I sashed each panel, having to rip out when I misplaced the wider vs. the narrower strips of white, and then I had to figure out where I wanted the mini panels to go, and I went with the sides of the quilt so that I wouldn't end up with a crazy long and narrow quilt.  In doing that, I also had to rip out and then buy more white fabric, but the math wasn't too awful, aha.

The only other near-fatal accidents with this quilt involved not making the backing quite enough.  It was wider than the top by about 6 inches, but it BARELY met the length of the top, and that was a bit scary, as I kept moving the top around to match the backing underneath the batting, not wanting to warp the top, clearly, but wanting to stretch it as far as I could. 

Lastly, when I ironing, I knew I was temping the fates because when there is water/steam involved with an iron, it sometimes lays down a rust mark, but I REALLY wanted to get out the pink pen marks (by the way, I love that pink pen, but it's a wash-out, not an iron-out; use Frixion pens in your quilting!!) without washing it.  Anyway.... you see where this is headed.  I lost my ever-loving mind and threw that quilt in the washer, knowing that the open seam where I had sewn the binding on would likely fray quite a bit in the wash.... and it DID.  After washing and drying, I then had to go back and re-sew some of the binding where it had frayed too close to the seam line.  That wasn't awesome, to be honest.

The only really flat photo of the front

Anyway, it took a few days to hand-sew the other side of the binding down, as life is crazy right now with tons of driving to and fro, but the quilt overall is done and awesome and it is loved.  I so love surprising people!!!!

And so.... days in the life of!

She has a thing about cleaning threads out of chair wheels....

Birthday posters for Meagan!

Finally starting to hang our art from The Rarest Bird!

Helping make Vegan Snickers Pie! 

For cousin Helen!

Second day this week of their camps!

Tiberius wanted an army helmet, of course

I just keep making MORE bags!

Gathers and Circles: A Two-for-One Deal in the Little Lizard King Sorrento Dress

A new favorite pattern!!!  Pretty stinkin' simple, and both Camden and I like it.

The Sorrento Dress by Little Lizard King offers both a circle skirt and gathered skirt option, and I sewed up one of each - though in fabrics opposite to what I intended, aha.  

I had originally purchased the lovely purple bird fabric from Joann Fabrics (you have heard me say it a million times - I just do not generally like the fabric quality they carry, but this quilting cotton felt like a great quilting cotton, and while I wouldn't always recommend quilting cotton for this type of dress, it works well and is a dress for a kid, so, not a big deal to me) and had planned to whip up the circle skirt version.  THEN, while at Modern Domestic one day, I saw the gorgeous black flowered print on a tube and had to have it.  It wasn't expensive, and it was wide fabric, so, I didn't need much.

After both fabrics were washed, dried and ironed, I realized that the bird fabric wasn't wide enough for a circle skirt, and I was then tragically worried I didn't buy enough black fabric to make a circle skirt in lieu of that.... This story ends well, though - yay!  I had enough black fabric, and I just turned that into the circle skirt version - and the birds into the gathered skirt.  (The best part, though, is that Joann Fabrics carries two versions of the birds, and I had actually purchased both and meant to use the other purple shade, LOL!  So, I will use that for next year's version, maybe!)

The dress is crazy easy to put together for such a cute little number.  I will say, though, that I MUCH PREFER circle skirts over gathered skirts, especially when the gathers are made on a quilting cotton.  It just creates too much bulk.  As for the circle version, I did lengthen it to what would be a size 9, and the circle skirt I also lengthened, though apparently not as long, and it's a full 1.25 inches shorter, I think.  I'm a bit bummed about that, as it's obviously short and would be better if it was longer.  Either way, both are crazy cute, and I just love them THIS much.

The only outright change I made was in under-stitching around the top of the bodice, rather than either doing nothing or edge-stitching.  I prefer a clean finish but also wanted that lining to stay in place.  And not a huge deal, but to me, this is important:  when straps are involved, I usually try to remember, after the whole thing is sewn, but is still inside-out, to stitch across the straps again in the seam allowance, for extra strength (as the original basting stitch is sometimes cut off).

On another note, I didn't go by measurements for the pattern.  With other patterns, I usually look at measurements and sew either her size or a size up.  I sewed a size 8 in this case, and it is SO gappy in the bodice.  For the second version, the purple dress, I sewed a size 7, and it looks much nicer.  No big deal, I figure, as she'll easily wear it next summer, too, and we'll just use a camisole under it for now.

Anyway, great dress, and everyone is correct when they say you DO need to make this!  Don't wait!

Some time in the life of....

Fun day at Fort Vancouver!

You know... water slides at gymnastics ;)

They desperately wanted one camp night in the back yard... and were high on it

Such a happy boy, LOL