Friday, June 26, 2009

in soviet russia, fabric sews you

Soon to be dungarees. Probably.
I've been a bit slack with knitting since UK Ravelry Day, for many reasons. Partly heat-induced torpor, which makes a good face-down sprawl on the lawn look incredibly appealing. *Picks ants out of eyebrows*. I've also been down the allotment a lot when I can muster up the energy. (Anyone in the Manchester area want any raspberries?! you have to pick them yourself though :) )

The rest of my spare time, I have mostly been very slowly working on this. My First Evah Sewing Pattern! I finally plucked up the courage to go to my local fabric store, flick through the pattern booklets and pick something. It purports to be Very Easy, so we'll see. It's a sort of dungarees / romper suit type thing for a baby. I'm not used to this topsy turvy world of sewing, where the pattern costs 3 quid and the fabric is only 2.50. So the small bit of tissue papery stuff is more expensive than the big bit of corduroy? I come from Knitting Land where most patterns are free and the raw materials are sometimes pricey, so this fabric shop is a bit like looking glass world to me - I half expected the Red Queen to take my money. So far I haven't found anything too unintelligible in the pattern, but I haven't got very far as it took me ages to cut everything out. As the pattern has lots of different sizes, I felt that it might be nice to reuse it when the wee man has grown a bit, so I decided to be a masochist and not actually cut the pattern pieces. Instead I laboriously traced the pattern, cut out templates, and eventually just gave up and drew roughly on the fabric with chalk where the lines were supposed to be. I can't see this being a particularly accurate garment but it's a learning experience I guess. Hey, I have already learned that for the sake of saving three quid, it would have been an awful lot easier just to cut the damn thing! Oh well. At least I can progress on to the hopefully slightly more fun bit where I actually sew stuff together now... although, the sun has come out now, and there is a comfy looking patch of grass over there...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please please can I come pick raspberries? We're all out of jam and we were going to go picking anyways.

I'll trade you for cheesecake or brownies or something nice!

..a bit of advice on the sewing that someone once gave me:
'If it's smaller than the seam allowance, it doesn't matter.'

rubbishknitter said...

of course you can! there are blackcurrants looking ripe too if you're interested.

awesome sewing advice. I was just starting to realise that 5/8 inch can hide a multitude of sins... :)