Have I mentioned that it’s too hot to knit? Or the humidity? Knitting mojo is low, so I busted out the ancient Kenmore 8 for some fun sewing time. Where fun involves lots of tension issues and ill fitting clothing.

A skirt! Not without a fight, but still, it’s wearable and I’m wearing it! I got the Sew What! Skirts book for a gift last year, and I finally busted it open and attempted, wait for it, a skirt!

I had all sorts of issues with using this book to create a skirt that fit well. My main complaint is that the book oversimplifies things a ton. There’s a spread of two pages that tells you how to draft a skirt pattern to your own measurements, and the rest of the book is devoted to example skirts that use the basic formula. I feel that the drafting portion could use more details. For example, the book tells you to add 2 to 4 inches of ease to your measurements for the pattern. Well, which is it, two or four inches? I ended up sewing a muslin that was too small, then I made this skirt too large, cutting it down until it fit.

I realized that this skirt was too large after I inserted the zipper. Speaking of the zipper - looking for instructions on inserting an invisible zipper? Don’t look in Sew What! Skirts for the answer, as they don’t cover it. The sew? i knit blog has an awesome tutorial on invisibly zippering, and I finally figured out how to use my plastic invisible zipper foot!

Back to the cutting down part. I really didn’t want to rip out my wonderfully invisible zipper, so I started cutting down the other side of the skirt, a half-inch at a time, until the skirt fit. Back at step one, I painstakingly lined up the fabric pattern so that it would be perfectly centered. However, cutting down the size of the skirt on one side made the pattern off center. It’s not terribly noticeable in these photos, but I cut enough to make it look like a big, two inch mistake.

Trimming fabric from the edge of the skirt wasn’t enough - the waist was too large and the zipper stuck out, making me look larger in the hips than I already am. So I ended up adding darts to the back of the skirt, which mostly fixed the fit issues. I also dropped the front of the waistband about an inch more than the pattern called for.

For the waistband, I followed the book’s directions for the facing and understitching. The facing instructions are great, but I didn’t feel that the understitching was enough to hold the facing down. I think that understitching would work perfectly if you had the weight of a full lining to keep things in place. Speaking of linings, you better look elsewhere on instructions on lining your skirt, the book doesn’t even mention it. I can’t remember when was last time I purchased a non-denim skirt that wasn’t lined.

I wouldn’t say that this is the most flattering skirt that I own, but it’s definitely wearable. If I were starting from scratch, I would just buy a skirt pattern, make a muslin, and modify the pattern for my short waisted torso.

Jumping for joy that this skirt is done!

What do knitters do when one of their kind is pregnant? Well, they knit! Last month, I decided to organize a little square-along for a fellow stitch and bitch-er, Sharron.

These are my squares! We knit everything in Berroco Comfort in the Lavendar Frost colorway. The full-blanket photos show the color best. The good: Soft and machine washable and dryable. The bad: it’s splitty as hell. So, so splitty.

Then my two lonely squares were then joined by 14 others. Square party! In alphabetical order, the hip to be square knitters were: Amy, Esther, Jenny, Katharine, Laura, Liz, Maya, Mo, Meredith, Sarah, and Susan. A few of these fine ladies knit two squares so that the blanket could be a beautiful 4×4 square.

There were a few requirements - the squares had to be 9 inches square, it had to be bordered by one stockinette stitch on all sides, and the ends were to be unwoven for seaming. After that, anything goes. Isn’t this a pretty awesome mix of textures? Yes!

The disadvantage of organizing something like this is that the organizer is in charge of seaming. First, I arranged the squares into columns based on width, seamed them into strips, and then mattress stitched the strips together. The biggest challenge was that each square was a different gauge, so I had to get the maths involved for perfect seaming. Lastly, I picked up stitches around the blanket and did a single crochet border.

Fin! The crochet border curled when I first worked it, but eventually flattened out after the blanket was washed. Sharron is very allergic to cats, so the blanket went into the washing machine and directly into a gift bag, without passing Go or returning into the fur-infested house.

I think she liked it!

Sorry about the whole abandonment thing, blog. I took a bit of a break to do some secret knitting, and then I wasn’t working on anything for a while, and then I became lazy. I blame summer. It’s do damn hot to do anything but sit around, drink margaritas, and bitch about humidity. Ugh, humidity. But! Now I can blog about the unbloggables, and I’ve even been knitting a bit. I started a sock.

Then abandoned it for another sock, which is still unphotographed.

I also started a new, non-crafty project - the 365 days, self-portrait one. I think it’s an interesting idea, and I’ve been at it for a little over a month. I’ve been maybe spending all of my blogging time on flickr these days. I’m planning on peppering this space with some of the 365 photos, so that we don’t have another of these long breaks apart.

I may be back, but I’m leaving again for a couple of weeks. Rob has a conference in Zurich and I’m going with him! I’m very excited to go far, far away, to a land that has (hopefully!) less humidity than Houston. However, I’m not leaving you out in the cold, blog! Time permitting, I’m going to write a couple of crafty posts that will magically appear while I’m away.