Crochet Wool

Fingerless Gloves – Crochet wool, originally uploaded by fmirela.

Missing winter already? And it is the middle of summer…
It shows I have been living for too long here in Florida and I don’t know what season we are in. I wish I had more winter and more mountains!

The photos were taken at the end of April 2009 in Snowbird Utah, skiing at 20C was weird but fun, ice in the morning, a wet melt in the afternoon, but well worth the trip, the scenery is incredible.

Pattern: from Crochet Magazine
Yarn: Patons Classic Wool

Stripes closeup:

Fleece lining:

Strings:

Matching scarf with some needle felting on fleece and yarn remains:

Stripes

Stripes, originally uploaded by fmirela.

I’ve made the pattern for the top I’m wearing as simple as possible and really gave thought to the stripes on the fabric, wanted to align the teal line with the waist line.

So this is a simple T shaped top with a fitted waist and sort of a 70’s feel in the cut and 80’s in the print. I keep meaning to scan the pattern and share it on BurdaStyle…maybe one day…

The top on the dress form is finished and there is another one I’ve made already in the same fabric, pictures pending.

Stripes Dress

Stripes Dress, originally uploaded by fmirela.

This stripy fabric is from JoAnns but actually made in India. They carried a series of really nice Indian fabrics and I stocked up on a few. I’m not a crazy fan of yellow (for clothes for me I mean…), but started to like it a lot more lately. I don’t have a favorite color, I just have phases, this is my yellow phase. What got me to change my mind about this color?

This pretty bird I found outside the office building after a crazy storm two weeks ago. My efforts for finding its owner did not pay off, so I named it Sunny, got a bird house and it has been staying with me and Marius since. Healthy and eating, but still sad I think…it takes some time to get used to a new environment, plus I think it is a she, very quite during the day and doesn’t care for its mirror reflection…I wish I had found the owner, maybe she had a soul mate and misses him…On the other hand I wish it was a boy birdie so I could teach him to whistle and talk. I have a pretty Tookie cockatiel back in Romania, he is approximately 9 years old now 🙂
…Back to the dress…
The pattern is based on model number 132 from Burda WOF isue 03/2005. My friend Alina stopped by one day and brought this stripes fabric and a top she liked from the store. It was supposed to be a very simple pattern with the top part as a false wrap. We tried to find a similar pattern and from the magazines I have here this was the closest. We’ve made it sleeveless and took it in about a cm in the center front and back. The original pattern is also a real wrap dress, but we copied the pattern only til the center line and made it symmetrical. Most of the work had to be done at the cleavage as Burda patterns always seem to be cut too deep. I’m not thrilled with the fit under the bust but its ok…not perfect, but I guess only us seamstresses notice stuff like this…so it will do.
We didn’t find the time to get to sewing Alina’s top, but it gave me an idea of what to do with my yellow stripes that I forgot what I got them for initially. There was quite a lot of fabric, I couldn’t choose whether to do a top or a dress, so I’ve made both.

I added an invisible zipper on the left side, from under the sleeve down. The edges at the neckline and sleeves are finished with a satin ribbon on the underside. I sewed the ribbon on the edge of the fabric, doing the armholes after sewing the shoulder seam and before sewing the underarm seam. I placed the ribbon wrong side over the right side of the fabric, over the raw edge, sewed a straight line at the edge of the ribbon, then turned it to the underside and topstitched from the front side. I did the same with the neckline. A bias tape would have been better the a satin ribbon, it molds better to the curved seams.