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Showing posts from January, 2020

Clothes I Did Not Make In 2019

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. While I'm very proud of all the garments I made in 2019, I feel I need to be honest about the things I didn't finish. I started sewing this shirt for myself in 2018.  I somehow messed up the stitching on one of the buttonholes.  I carefully picked out the stitches, and then lost my nerve.   I bought this vintage yarn at an estate sale in 2018.  It was in its original box.  I found a 1950s knitting pattern and got to work. Smog helped me knit. As did Cardigan. Likewise, Sleeves.  All the cats were very helpful. The week Cardigan died, I discovered a major error in my knitting.  I was distraught, and also recovering from surgery, and I just sort of abandoned this project.  At this point, I no longer remember what the error is. I think part of the problem is the fact that some skeins of this yarn have faded differently than others.  Since I match color for a living, this may be a deal-breaker. In October, I set a

Clothes I Made in 2019

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... A while back, I challenged myself to improve my garment-making skills.  But, because I can't do anything the easy way, I challenged myself to sew and knit from vintage patterns. I particularly wanted to improve my sewing.  I had the idea that vintage dressmakers had a higher level of skill than folks today, and that by working with vintage patterns, I'd be exposed to a great range of techniques. Also, it seemed a way of ending up with a wardrobe of clothes that I could wear to vintage events. Or maybe I just wanted to torture myself.  Knitting a garment using teeny-tiny knitting needles, and then cutting it up on purpose tends to support the "torture myself" theory. But rather than delving into the reasons for why I did any of the absurd things I did in the past year, let's look at what I did.  As it turns out, I made quite a few things. I knit a waistcoat for Robb, based on a pattern from the 1930s.  I used wool that I'd dyed,