Knotty gloves, civil war, origami

I have been working on alterations for costumes for a local theater company Hale Center Theater for Les Misérables.  Having fun and learning lots the best of all things.  So I do not have much to show for that.Sorry but alterations never look like much even though they are a needed thing.

But I been making a civil war dress that I might put up for sale in my etsy shop so watch for that.    If has over 25 yards of fringe on it already and may get up to about 30 yards and over 7 yards of upholstery fabric and a few yards of yellow satin liner and contrast.  Hard to tell in the photo but it is a pretty dress.  It is obviously only half done.  I plan on making lots of costumes in the near future for sale.

I also frogged a raspberry colored sweater I was given by my mother-in-law.  It is a cotton rayon blend this is nothing but a bunch of yarn balls now waiting to be used.  This photo was taken during the process of dismantling.  There wear some mighty big snaps on that sweater.  It was a style of sweater I would not use but the yarn I liked.

 

My oldest daughter started a pair of gloves recently using Patons Kroy black sock yarn.  She raided my yarn stash with out asking.  But I guess that is ok since she is making the gloves for me and I have wanted to make these for a few years.  So now I get them and all I had to do was have the yarn.  she is leaving the tips off of the fingers so I can still use my phone.

My youngest daughter as always is playing with origami.

So this is my families last week in a nutshell although we did have ball room performances too. The girls,  my oldest two, also went to an 80's dance.

Pirate Frocks

I was reading the pattern I was supposed to use for the current play Les Miserables.  But upon reading it I did not trust the pattern.  The instructions were terrible to read/follow and the markings are missing from the pattern pieces.  If a person is not use to sewing lots of different items I would not recommend this pattern.

So instead of starting right in on the fabric for the play I wanted to test out the two sizes I would needed to make in my own fabric.  This is fabric I had on hand.  So I just used what I had as I did not want the test to cost me anything just wanted to try with what I had.  When I looked at my fabrics I know my kids like to play dress up for talk like a pirate day so I thought I would make mine look pirate esc.


So I traced the patterns on Sunday.  Then on Monday I made the faux leather one for an experiment.  I had my husband try on the faux leather one and it was way too small for him he should have been able to wear it.  The pattern runs two sizes too small.  The buttons on the faux leather one are a mixture of buttons I have collected over the years they are all mismatched but all look like leather knots. Some came from my mother-in-law some from my Vova some from other relatives.  I wanted it to look old and that things had been replaced and damaged from the sea.  So this is what I did.  Originally this fabric was going to be for a steam punk outfit but that never happened.  Because the pattern ran small it does not fit my husband with a 44 inch chest it will fit a chest of 40-42 so it is for sale in my etsy shop if any on eis interested in the faux Leather frock coat.

The red one I cut Monday night and and sewed Tuesday morning.  When I was making the red one it was to fit someone 4 inches bigger in the chest than me.  But it ended up  fitting me and not the young man that is four inches larger in the chest.  So this just would not work.

The red fabric was bought on clearance long ago and the green liner was a thrift shop find.

We did a rush fitting so see where things stood so I could cut into the plays fabric as I was worried before if I cut into I , it would be a wasted.  As I wanted to get started soon but after the fitting it was decided by the head costumer to do something else for them as neither of us trusted the pattern plus it has some weird details like a fly flap on the back near the vents.

So I am not making the three jackets I thought I would but I will help with fittings which still excites me.  So I am now altering dressing and finishing pieces and so on.  Below is what the fabric was to look like I was to use but since it is not happening now I do not mind showing.  If I was still making it I would not have made this post till after the play was going.  I loved the color choices and the button choices.  But I am sure the head costumer will use them for some other beautiful project.

knitting and a formal and Les Misérables

 

We had a church game night last night and my whole family went.  I am some what an anti-social person I like being in big groups but I like to be by myself and just people watch.  So I went but I took a new knitting project with me to work on I started the project right before I went.  Meaning I cast it on and did two rows.

The pattern is Victorian Neck Cozy by Wendy Johnson it is a free pattern so if you like it you can make it too.
 
I am using glamor size 2 yarn.  If I did this again I would go down two sizes in knitting needle for the neck area as this yarn is real stretchy and end sup too loose I think but I am fine with slouchy collars so I will not be frogging this.  It is hard to tell in the photo but this yarn has a metallic fiber in it and has sparkle.

I have not posted much in the last few days as I was doing a sort of repair project for a customer.  Taking a formal she bought on the Internet from China with no sleeves and a see through back and a long train.  I cut the train off  made sleeves and lined the back.  You can see in the photos where the front is see through above the bust area the entire back was that way and no sleeves.   

So the process of cutting off the train made it easier for the girl to wear and not have her hem destroyed plus it gave me fabric that matched the dress to make the cap sleeves and to make the liner for the back of the dress.   For got to take a picture of the before.  But here are some afters that do show the sleeves and the see through area in the front.

After liner put in top back

The dress is too small to fit my dress form thus the reason I do not have it zipped up but you can still see the area that I filled in with a liner.  Because if the bead work I ended up having to hand sew the liner and the sleeves to the dress and I did two rolled hems by hand on the sheer over lay and the liner of the skirt.

front with sleeve and you can see how see through the back would have been by how see through the front is.

Now just to deliver it to the customer so her daughter can either wear it to preference or prom.

I ended up redoing the sleeves to make them more of a flutter sleeve and a little looser.   They   looked better the second go round.

On a real happy note I get to make three jackets ( frock coats) for Les Misérables for a local professional theater  "The Hale Center Theater in Orem".  I am so excited to do this you can not believe it.  They are the design of the head costumer so I will not show photos of as I go as it is her concept.  But after the show is in production I will show them.  What I am excited most about is two are for Jean Val Jean and one is for Marius.  I figured I would be doing people that are not main characters but this makes me excited and nervous all at the same time.

Thank you all

I noticed this morning when I woke up that my snowy feathered cape pattern was number twenty of the "Top 20 of what is Hot Right Now" on Ravelry.  Thank you all so much I feel very loved this morning.  What a lovely way to start a day.

Update:
It got all the way up to 10  before it droped out of the top 20.

Some of you may remember last May when I was trying to get a job at a local theater company doing costuming for them.  Well I did not get the job then but they said if they got overwhelmed with a play I would be one of the first people they called to help costume contract work.  Guess what I got a call yesterday they never forgot me and want me to help costume Le Miserable so excited for this chance.  Hope I actually do get to do this.

Ravelry patterns now free

For those of you on Ralvelry  I have made all my patterns there free.  There are some new laws going into effect that affect pdfs.  I just do not care to deal with the European tax system.  That includes my Irish Crochet hat


If you like my blog and the free patterns and tutorials and want to say thank you  I have a wish list on ravelry of patterns (click here) I would like to make.  Thank you in advance for being kind and saying thank you back.

Love Sunshine

Snowy Feather Lace cape free pattern

I was going to make this pattern for sale but I decided to let you all have it for free.  So happy New year and Happy knitting.

Supplies I used

• one 16" circular needle size 5 3.75 mm
• 2+ balls of vintage size 10 total weight used= 3.4 oz
• Stitch markers 
• sewing needle to weave tails together
• 

Pattern for lace

 

Starting at neck

cast on very loosley 117 stitches join in round being careful not to get your stitches twisted.  If you need/want a bigger starting ring add in sets of 9 stitches.

work the four rows of the chart 15 times omitting the last round on the 15th time.

all even rounds are knit

for next knit round knit in the front and back of every stitch all the way around you just doubled your stitches

continue in lace pattern for 21 more repeats bind of with a very stretchy bind off. cut and finish threads

I wet finger blocked mine there is a lot of give in the lace to make it either narrow and long or wide and shorter if you want it longer by all means make more rows.

This hits me a little below the elbow and I am 5 foot 7inches 130 pounds.

Iif you find mistakes in the pattern please let me know just so you all know I knit lace loose so if you knit tight please add more stitches to your foundation.

If you use and like this pattern I have a wish list on ravelry of patterns I would like to make.  Thank you in advance for being kind and saying thank you back.  But please do not feel like you have to.

Love Sunshine

Snowy Feather Lace Cape Finished

My kids had a concert choir retreat this weekend.  I got called by my middle daughter saying my youngest had to be rescued off of the mountain and that I needed to go up there.  My family is bleeders and this is what she was afraid of that my youngest was having a joint bleed and a bad one. Several of my family member have Von Willenbrand's Disease it is genetic similar to Hemophillia.  So I had to instantly go up the Canyon about an hour drive to where my kids were.  With her medicine and bandages and so on.  Since this was four hours before the retreat would be over I took my knitting project with me.  Easy to do as it was already  in my car.  I took care of my kid and then sat down for the retreat to be over and continued to monitor my youngest.

 

While sitting there I got all but the last row of my knitted cape done. Which I did when I got home as well as getting wet and hand blocked it.  It was a pretty quick and easy knit to do.  I really like the way the lace came out on this project.  I do not usually get to make things for myself to keep.  So it is nice to make something for myself.

I would say more about the accident but I would not be able to say anything good about the rangers and their lack of help.  I am grateful for the father of one of my middle daughters friends.  Who packed out my child on his back for a mile.  Not a small feet since she weights 125 pounds.  I am grateful for my middle daughter who kept her head (not like the teenagers with her who panicked) she got help and took over when the EMT's did not know what to do.  So she checked for a break or a sprang.  Then placed the compression bandages on my youngest after she had iced the ankle by packing her glove with snow and stuffing it in my daughter boot so it could be cold but not make her sock and pants wet ( oh yes the EMT's did not even have those bandages she had to go buy them).  I am glad my children have been taught to be self reliant and to keep a level head too.

Amusing the name of this is snowy feather because my daughter who is 13 years old, was snow shoeing and only weighs 125 pounds for her height of 5 foot 6 a feather at that height.  It will always be a reminder of the day she was carried off of the mountain.  So apropo.

Shannon Hale an amazing person

Had a guest speaker at my children's school today Shannon Hale authoress.  She is my middle daughters favorite writer.

It was nice hearing her talk about how she struggled and then became an author.  She has spunk and personality.  It would be nice to get to know her in real life not just as a guess speaker.  From one of yesterdays posts I talked about how my daughter went to a costume dance she was dressed up like one of her characters from one of her books.

She had the children laughing shouting for joy.  She recalled growing up in the 80's big hair and all and just life in general just a good natured person.

The long piece of paper is just some of her rejection notes from publishers before she got her first book deal.

My oldest daughter is all in black with her tech crew utilities belt on.  She helped set up and run the show.  She is her schools crew chief.   She wants to be in technical theater when she is an adult..

 Sure a beautiful person and was an amazing speaker to the youth.

It is a good photo of the girls at the book signing after Shannon's talk. Somehow I always manage to look odd in photos thus the reason you do not see many photos of me ( the one with her eyes closed) Taken by a friend of mine. But I am always happy to be with my girls.