When I first saw these dragon egg skeins, it was right in the wake of Joann’s closure, I felt a sense of wonder. Like, maybe there was more to see outside the cave, to paraphrase Plato. I began to look at niche and new to me yarn brands, and Noro stole my heart.
The yarn is effervescent, floating on the loveliness of its craftsmanship. The yarn looks hand spun, although it is made on a hybrid machine. It called to me, as a knitter who had stuck to the budget yarn and avoided wool for years because the scratchiness was all I could remember. I didn’t know that wool, in spite of the scratchiness, has unique properties that enhance your stitches and make caring for your sweaters easy. Wool is antimicrobial naturally, meaning you don’t have to wash them consistently like other garments in your closet. They can be spot cleaned and refreshed between wears. The other important thing I was missing out on was the way the wool grips onto itself, it has memory, and a squish that is unlike what I had experienced with my acrylic and cotton based fibers.
Now, the Noro had me from first sight, but how was this self striping yarn to work with? Great actually! I chose the colorway Kori, a cool toned blend of blues and purples, with occasional hints of green, red, and gray.
The pooling was well behaved and the transitions were gradual. The hand spun feel of the yarn did pose some issues for me, when it came to gauge. There were sections that were quite thick and disconcertingly thin. I did cut some of thread like sections out of my yarn, because one snapped on me as I was working with it. This led to some yarn chicken, unfortunately.
My lack of yardage was also my own fault. When I first ordered this yarn, from my local yarn shop, I had planned to make a vest. But once I felt the fabric the yarn created, I wanted a whole sweater. This was not going to be possible with 900 meters of yarn. I had to get crafty, and sourced some yarn from my stash that was a similar color and weight, and most importantly, was a non-super wash wool like the Noro. To mimic the color story of the Sauin, I was careful to splice in the other yarn where the colors made sense and I think it is hard to tell what is the Noro yarn and what is Knit Picks Palette.
So what is it like to wear? A dream honestly. It feels like a vintage sweater, like a wool sweater from the 80s or 90s, a find that would make you do a happy dance if you picked this up at a thrift store. It is minimally scratchy, warm, yet breathable. It’s made me a wool convert and a Noro stan. I want to make this over and over again. What will keep me in check is the price point and availability. Each skein of the Sauin was 35 USD. That is why I chose to add in yarn from my stash to keep this project at 70 USD, instead of 105 or 140 USD, since I am bad at guessing yardage. This yarn brand is incredibly popular, which has made it tricky to get my hands on, but I am seeing that is 2026 the yarn is becoming more common in the US. That makes me happy to see – every knitter and crocheter should give this fiber a try!
I’ve mentioned this before, but as a maker, I revisit a single project many times before it is done. Sometimes I will live with a finished object for a month, a few months, or even a year, and suddenly pick it back up again to adjust something that feels off. Honestly, taking a season or two away from that garment – such as, putting away a dress for the winter, or a sweater while you sweat it out for the summer, can give your mind the space to forget and re-acquaint yourself to the garment like you picked it up from the store. It is a whole new piece again, which can lead to me be less than thrilled with past me and her design choices.
Take this vest for example, I began this project in December 2024, wrapping it in February 2025. I wore it a few times, as it stands as a vest that winter and spring, then it was put away for the warm weather. When cool air returned in the fall, I pulled it out of its drawer and set it on my dress form. This vest did not feel complete, it had more to say, even though my hands were weary back in the winter, so I stopped and called this piece done. But its not done, it would be a gorgeous colorful sweater, and it was time to go back to this garment to make it whole.
Now, this was a self drafted piece. A complicated self drafted piece that helped me cut my color work chops in a garment. This was the first sweater I made with such a large color palette and the first time I decided to make a knitted piece with the motivation of telling a story. I wanted to evoke a winter sky, with a moon that was visible on the front and back. A moon with stars, and clouds, floating above a forest. This sweater would not only feature colorful forms across the fabric, it would have texture. I chose to use the ‘seersucker stitch’ as it was labeled from a Pinterest chart, to weave a diamond texture into the fabric for a 3-D plush effect. I chose large and miniature color work sections to create ebb and flow in the color story.
For the bind off, I had grown tired of the classic 1×1 rib, so I tried something a little different! I chose to create tight stripes, knit stitched together. Instead of stockinette which used knit (right side) and purl (wrong side) for it’s classic construction, I decided knit stitch, knitting the right side and wrong side, would stabilize the stitches for a lack of curling in the finished fabric. And it worked! The technique and color changes ground the color palette for a cohesive garment.
Keeping these previous choices in mind, when it came time to add sleeves and a new collar, I chose to employee a new to me technique, crochet. I wanted the sleeves to be made in the round, and be completed quickly so I could wear this piece for most of the winter. Crochet is much easier to do in the round, and to make progress quickly. The crochet stitches allowed me to work in new directions too, so the sweater had vertical texture to contrast with the horizontal lines of the original vest. With sleeves complete, this is one of my favorite pieces to date. It tells a story. The color palette reminds me of Stardew Valley. The cloud on the back reminds me of an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender when Appa is missing, and Aang thinks a cloud flying above is Appa floating above. I love the variety of colors – gold, navy, magenta, violet, and cream.
This was a labor of love, but I would highly recommend trying a complex project such as this if you are interested in making your own garments. Not only does this piece express my identity, it taught me how to be a better fiber artist. I feel proud each time I wear it. Get inspired and start stitching something from your own imagination!
A project that I have struggled with as a fiber artist, has been the classic cardigan. Like menswear, there is something deceivingly simple yet downright complex. This is my journey to make my first successful cardigan project!
To make this garment, I used 3 Caron Blossom Cakes for a total yardage of 1443, give or take a yard or three left over. I used a 5.5 mm hook and chose a combination of single crochet for the collar and cuffs, and double crochet for the body of the garment. This was my second crochet project, and I’m shocked with how well it turned out, compared to my first knit garments! Crochet is such a forgiving medium, compared to working live stitches between two needles in knitting. It’s simple to pull back progress to correct mistakes, without losing the integrity of the garment. Seaming the garment was far easier, using the hook to single crochet slip stitch the panels together. For the sleeves, it was a straightforward transition to crocheting in the round, compared to how confusing I find knitting in the round to be. In the same way, finding the stitches to pick up for the collar and button band, was a piece of cake!
Honestly, I have struggled with cardigans in the past – including felting a finished garment less than a week after I finished knitting it. It was devastating! The only thing I struggled with in this project was button color, size, and placement. As you can see from the featured photo and this one below, I have changed the color and button placement with wear. The vintage teal buttons I bought secondhand are brittle, one actually snapped in half. These tortoiseshell buttons are darker than I planned to use. I originally wanted to use buttons in a similar color value to the yarn hue, but the contrast is not bad. I think it brings more polish to the finished piece. The tortoiseshell buttons are actually the same I used on my felted cardigan. Always save your notions!
Because this cardigan is made from Caron Blossom Cakes, it is a combination of cotton and polyester, and is quite breathable for how chunky and fuzzy the yarn is. Now, the crochet stitches are certainly helping, but I am impressed by how comfortable this yarn is to wear. It tempts me to buy more, in a different colorway to make another sweater or cardigan. I have pause though. All the color offerings are vibrant. What if two garments with this yarn style is too much?
Overall, I loved my experience making this garment and wearing it. It’s a solid cardigan for Fall and Spring, with appropriate layering I’m sure I would feel warm enough in Winter too.
Have you crocheted a cardigan before? What was your first crochet project? Have you worked with Caron Blossom Cakes?
I wanted to make a cardigan that celebrated our garden, with a yarn inspired by Beatrix Potter, that was made from wool, and featured a fair isle design. To do this I used Pacific Knit Co’s farm doodle deck and Knit Picks’ Chroma Worsted Weight yarn in the colors Beatrix and New Leaf. The Chroma yarn has become a fast favorite of mine for its durability and delicious halo. The yarn is comprised of 70% super wash wool and 30% nylon. This was a bit of a stash busting project, and a splurge. I wished to use up three skeins of deadstock New Leaf, finding the pink-orange-white of Beatrix was the perfect spring-inspired color palette upon which to build. Using a gift card from Christmas, I purchased 6 skeins of Beatrix, although I had to repurchase more with this project using thirteen skeins in total. Not cheap! But worth the splurge to create a piece I plan to wear for the rest of my life that celebrates the garden we have created here at our new house. It’s our in-town farm, as our friend calls it.
The bulk of this project was done on US 8 straight needles, and seamed together using a 5.5 mm crochet hook. The bottom ribbing was created using a US 4 circular needle. The size reduction of 1.5 mm, changed the gauge to create this floral ruffle along the bottom edge. At complete accident! But I like it. In addition, I used mostly stockinette stitches, with 1×1 ribbing at the cuffs, collar, button band, and bottom hem, and the seersucker stitch for added texture, in between color work sections. Will I add buttons? I am uncertain. The original plan was to use buttons, and have purchased buttons, yet I like to wear my garments first beforehand, to see if I want to wear the garment closed. Since yesterday was the Summer Solstice, I have a while to wait!
This garment took approximately 4 months to complete, along side other sewing, crochet, and knitting projects.
Okay, as a millennial, I can’t hear the word pivot without thinking of this scene from Friends. But, silliness aside, Ross was correct; you have to pivot and pivot well. The longer I sew, the more agitated I get when I make foolish cutting or measuring mistakes in my garments. Like my shortalls from last year, I tried them on over the weekend because it is feeling warm and springlike here, and I was shocked by how poorly I fit the shorts. The top portion of the shorts fits excellently, but not the shorts. No one wants weird bunching when it comes to shorts, and that was exactly the problem!
At first, I went through the stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally acceptance that no matter how delusional I chose to be, these shortalls are uncomfortable. I would not wear them. This made me feel so many regrets. The pink overalls I drafted completely from scratch, using a special fabric featuring corgis and bread from a Japanese fabric brand called Kokka Fabric, sourced from my local fabric shop, Firecracker Fabrics. The second pair was cobbled together as a challenge of fabric and repurposing. The fabric was 1 yard of 59″ cotton twill from Mood Fabrics, and the pockets were sourced from a pair of shorts in my closet. I refused to scrap these. But what could I do to fix these? With all the patterns at play, adding in a new fabric sounded scary. Cutting these into bags or future quilting projects was throwing in the towel too soon for me.
My solution came to me one night, as I was washing my face; I didn’t have to make a drastic change. I had to address the problem – the way I cut the curve of the pants. I could remove the section that divided the fabric into legs, and transform the shortalls into pinafore dresses with a few cuts and stitches! It was a success! The shorts are now a skirt, by cutting away the curved line and sewing a straight seam on the back and front of the skirt. I also made a quick swap to the back bib of the brown floral pair, adjusting the square bib to the triangle shape of the pink ones. This adjusted the fit of the dress in an excellent way. The purpose of the triangle, I believe, from the fit change on my garment is to eliminate gapping between your shirt and the back bib, so the fit follows the line of your body.
Now, sewing is not the only place to pivot, obviously. Problem-solving is a fundamental part of the creative process. Projects rarely work out the way you want, from knitting to cooking to building a piece of furniture. In this fast fashion, consume and donate, culture poisoning my country’s culture, we are losing the art of problem-solving. This has been exacerbated by the rise of AI and ChatGPT. Why think at all? Why imagine, ponder, or research? Why try if you aren’t going to get “expert” results? That is what the rise of optimization culture is creating: the fear of trying. But you have to try to become an expert. AI is not an expert; it is a thief, stealing the knowledge of humans who have spent years and decades striving to know, unafraid to try and fail. It’s literally the scientific method. So if you are an impressionable person, who is growing up in this current era, don’t give up your creative ability for AI to do it for you. You will lose crucial thinking and creative skills if you don’t exercise your mind and problem-solve on your own. Just do it.
In 2025, sardines and other tinned fish became more than just food; they appeared on beaded bags, shirts, and prints. They also made their way to the fiber arts community, which inspired me to make a fish print sweater for Kyle, who enjoys fishing IRL and in video games. I just like the video game version.
The Design Concept
When planning a garment with a colorwork motif, I always consider scale, placement, and repetition. To do this, I use what I learned in art class many years ago – the seven fundamentals of art. So I consider line, shape, color, value, form, texture, and scale. In the catch-of-the-day sweater, it was important to make the fish wearable and to ensure good form and function. How do I make the fish on this sweater make sense? I decided to hang freshly caught fish on the sweater to help with the scale of the art. I placed them in the center, on the front, only to keep the perspective of this in focus. I thought placing more fish would become overwhelming to the eye and become unwearable.
Adding more fish would have required adjusting the scale and the color, meaning I would have simplified the sweater down to two yarn colors only, with sections of fair isle colorwork, which is a smaller, more concentrated technique. But I like the color contrast of using two colors, representing two types of fish with slightly different scale patterns. How big is too big? How do you represent a fish, with their scales and texture? For this, I went to Pinterest to find cross-stitch or knitting colorwork charts for inspiration. I believe I settled on a cross-stitch pattern because it had the detailed lines and scale I was looking for. I wanted the fish to look realistic, although it could be in an imagined world like Animal Crossing New Horizons or Stardew Valley. Whimsical? I think that is the best way to sum it up.
To make my pattern, I used the cross stitch reference and transferred it to graph paper by hand, tweaking some areas to make the inspiration my own. I did this in the same application for my Red Velvet Cosmic Knit Tank project. Next, I needed to determine the scale of the fish within the sweater pattern. It’s important to plan out how many stitches you need to complete the colorwork section across your rows and keep it centered. To do this, subtract the number of stitches in your colorwork pattern from the number of stitches in your row. Divide the sum by two and adjust to keep the stitches on either side equal, to keep the pattern centered. It is also important to note how tall the color work pattern is compared to the garment you are knitting, to allow enough room above and below that the graphic motif makes sense and doesn’t look misplaced on the garment. I think I literally held my pattern up to Kyle’s chest to figure it out.
Fiber Content
For this sweater, I went in a different yarn direction to try something new. I chose a wool and acrylic blend from Knit Picks called Mighty Stitch. It was underwhelming. The yarn, while soft, pills something fierce. It is also a slim worsted weight, which was exaggerated by the large needle size I used – US 10 or 6 mm. This created a breathable, airy sweater, but dang, did it throw off my pattern and design. Eventually, I had to face my fate – I was running out of yarn, and my panel was too narrow. Not exactly the outcome you want after spending a week on the front panel with the intricate fish design. I would rather start over than frog the color work, always.
I had some decisions to make. I originally purchased the Mighty Stitch on sale, but when I ran out of yarn, it was not on sale, and I wasn’t interested in doubling the price of this already too expensive project that was in the process of failing. So like Miss Frizzle recommends, I got ready to “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” I went to my closet of yarn and fabric and began to dig through the stash for something else I could introduce into the design. I found a warm-toned gray and neutral black yarn from Big Twist that was also worsted weight. Because the Mighty Stitch is a washable yarn, I felt comfortable combining the two yarns. I had already introduced acrylic yarn to the project through the mint and teal fish, using scrap Big Twist for those sections. Always check your fiber content, though, to avoid incompatible fibers that will make the project hard to care for over time.
Making a Change
The original design was changing from color palette to overall concept. This sweater would need to have color blocking sections now, to stretch the main green color. I decided to not only change up the design, but to change up my technique, opting for crochet on the sleeves to make the sleeves go faster. Knitting is a slow craft, and for some reason, knitted garments for Kyle have this curse of going horribly wrong and also knitting up slowly because of the hiccups. I wanted him to be able to wear this sweater for the bulk of the winter season of 2025-2026, and I was knitting this in August-October, so I took a shortcut. But in my defense, the texture of the sleeves, ironically, looks like fish scales to me. Especially with the gray and black colors!
The second change I made was adding width to the sides of the front panel to make the sweater a drop shoulder. I then knit the back panel wider from the start, and added a section of gray on the middle to upper back panel. It adds a nice contrast to the overall composition of the sweater, while making the sleeves feel cohesive.
Men vs Women Shoulder Shaping
The shoulders gave me such grief in this project! I’m used to making sweaters for myself and my female form. The bust makes the shoulders rest differently than I realized, and this came back to bite me. For a man’s sweater, the back needs to be longer. Especially the shoulder section on the back of the sweater is going to ride up the back, and be too long in the front. This happened, and I was bamboozled on how to fix it. Enter short row shaping and the principles of perspective and scale.
I learned that I needed to add short rows, meaning only working a section across a row to add length to a specific portion of the back panel, the back middle. To do this, you work back and forth on the section, evenually go back to working across the entire row. In addition, I made the back collar and back ribbing longer to compensate. These simple changes made the sweater appear the same length back and front, draping across the shoulders pleasantly, even if one side was technically longer. It doesn’t matter because of the role of perspective. Magic!
Final Thoughts
I learned a tremendous amount of knowledge from the Catch of the Day sweater, and I am grateful it all came together in the end to make a sweater that Kyle enjoys wearing. I have saved my patterns to attempt this again in the future with better yarn and proper dimensions to make the pattern fit well from the start, instead of scrambling to adjust at the end.
In 2025, one of my goals was to try my hand at crafting my own K-Pop Merch. Some bands are easy to find Merch for, and others, well, you are left to your own ingenuity. The bands I selected to try for this are NCT 127 and NMIXX, which I have tried and failed to find band tees for that I liked. For this project, I used two different techniques – embroidery and stranded colorwork knitting.
NCT 127 Embroidery
My first idea was to pick up a blank T-shirt from the craft section and get to work. The shirt I chose was a Gildan tee from Walmart, which I DO NOT recommend. This shirt is so freaking thin. Horrible quality compared to the blanks I have found at Michael’s, Dollar General, or even Hobby Lobby. But as I was dubious of my embroidery skills, I went ahead with the Walmart shirt as practice. That was the right call, because dang, embroidery is not as straightforward as it looks.
For this project, you will need: an embroidery hoop, embroidery floss bundles, a marker or pen to sketch your design on your shirt, and backing like embroidery interfacing or a fabric scrap that I used (because I forgot that the embroidery needed a backing).
For the design, I chose something simple. The song, the band, and a little imagery. I love their early album Cherrybomb (2017), but the song is almost 10 years old now, and it’s kinda hard to find any NCT Merch with it at this point. Seemed like the perfect option for a first try. I wasn’t expecting my stitches to be so tight; I felt like I was fighting myself across the whole piece. This was because I forgot about the backing for stability, and all this embroidery on this poor quality shirt, yeah, it wasn’t great. Afterwards, I added a backing to the embroidery with a scrap piece of another t-shirt.
Is it my best work? No. But is it a start for making better projects in the future? Yes! And I wear it anyway in the garden and as a sleep shirt.
Red Velvet Knitting
My desire for Red Velvet Merch was entirely motivated by the confusing announcement in April 2025 that members Yeri and Wendy did not renew their contracts with SM Entertainment, but Red Velvet was not disbanding. They have become one of my top girl groups after their release of Cosmic in 2024, so it seemed only appropriate to use the album Cosmic as my muse for a cotton knit tank with stranded colorwork. It’s a bit easier to find Red Velvet Merch on sites like Teepublic, from which I have bought a shirt. This project was more about expressing my love for this album, and I hope that Cosmic will not be their last release as a group.
You will need: a pencil, pen, graph paper, and stitch markers. (Along with your basic knitting supplies – needles, yarn, scissors, tapestry needle)
To start, I searched Pinterest for album artwork and a logo. I found a lot of options to use as a compass for the project, but decided the simplest option would be best. I opted for one color to keep the floats simple. To make my colorwork charts, I always use graph paper and a pencil to be able to adjust the marks that I transfer from the image. Once I am happy with my design, I trace over it in pen and use a pencil to cross out the lines of the pattern as I complete the project to mark my progress. To understand the dimensions of the image as I worked, I also marked the “canvas” with stitch markers. It is also important to note your garment construction and how that relates to your chart. I made this tank knitting bottom up, so I began working on my colorwork from the bottom of the chart.
I am thrilled with how this project turned out! As my first stranded colorwork project with this complex of a design, it was far easier than I thought to complete. You just have to plan out your image and be patient with your floats. Try not to hold too tightly and remember that blocking will help the tension relax.
Should I have posted this before Halloween? Yes, most definitely! But I forgot, so here we are, and I think that getting this posted before Thanksgiving is still fair. Fall is still here, even though Black Friday is coming at you like asteroids headed for Smallville.
We made a haunted house from recycled cereal boxes and other sources of repurposed cardboard to transform what could have been trash into a piece of Halloween decor from what we already had! The only materials we had to purchase for this project were acrylic paint and felt. We used Apple Barrel brand paint, which is less than 1 USD at Walmart or less than 3 USD on Amazon for big bottles. We also purchased sheets of felt that were 25 cents a sheet. For the adhesive, we used Tacky Glue for construction and Mod Podge to smooth out seams.
Our inspiration was the Addams Family mansion from the 1992 movie version. We wanted an old, mansard-roofed, Second Empire-style, Victorian-era house to play the role of haunted house. I wish our actual house was a bit more historical. It was built probably in the 1930s, but I question if it is a bit older, from the 1910s, from the style of woodwork. So a nice, old spooky build was just the ticket. We gathered inspiration from Pinterest and set forth to construct the house. We used two Honeycomb cereal boxes glued together, which are a bit taller than the average box. For the roof, we chose cardboard from a 12-pack of Wild Cherry Pepsi cans and some mac n cheese boxes for the roof line. The porch was constructed with a Wegman’s 12-pack of sparkling water. Miscellaneous cardboard scraps supplied the porch beams, door, and shutters.
To paint this, I bought an array of colors to mix custom shades. For realism, weathering and highlights, it is important to mix depth into the shades. If you have ever watched Bob Ross paint, you will know that he is always adding depth to his paintings with colors that exist in the natural scenes, but that your eyes may not recall what the colors on their own actually look like. If you want to paint a sky, you need more than just sky blue. If you are going to paint a tree, you need more than just brown and green.
I put two layers of paint on the pieces, which I painted after they were glued and fully dried. The first layer was necessary to block out the cardboard and the branding, which I could see shining through the matte paint. This was an excellent time to try mixing shades. I was able to try several colors underneath the final layer, which helped me determine the color scheme of moody charcoal, black, and burgundy for the roof and trim. The paint not only adds character but also preserves the pieces under a layer of acrylic. The final touch was a cutout silhouette of Gomez and Morticia in the window.
This project took a lot of drying time, and therefore was a month-long project that was finished a few days before Halloween. Because of this, I did not accomplish all I wanted to do, including moss, more weathering, ghosts, etc. Next year, I plan to add on. In the meantime, I am sharing this to inspire you to craft with trash for the upcoming holiday season. Let’s celebrate sustainability and underconsumption and make those decorations with repurposed materials! It truly is a blast. Happy Crafting!
I was inspired to get crafty by these YouTube creators:
Did you know that you can find daily highs and lows in a database to use for temperature blankets? I didn’t either until a year ago. (Yes, this project post is long overdue.)
I learned this from the lovely Toni Lipsey of TLYarnCrafts, which saved me when I spontaneously decided to make a temperature project last year for Christmas…after Thanksgiving.
I am a last-minute Christmas gift maker, along with many people out there. I am not special or organized, but I’d like to change the second one. Anyways!
What is a temperature blanket?
It is a fiber-based project, knit or crocheted, whose color palette and sometimes its pattern are determined by the daily weather of a specific location over a certain time span. I thought you had to track every day, but you do not, which is amazing because you can make this project on a whim. Although the actual work time will be longer than you may expect, it was for me.
It’s a fantastic stash-busting project or a way to use colorful yarn you may not put together in the same project. You can do whatever you want, and that is what makes this project such a special one. Your color changes will be different depending on what date range you choose and where you live.
It’s like a fiber fingerprint of a certain time, a memory, crafted into fabric.
The traditional date range is a year of weather, usually highs, which is what I did with my first project, but you can do whatever you want, and isn’t that amazing? You can do lows, weather patterns, etc. I had the idea of honoring a family member’s birthday by researching the temperature on their birthday every year since they were born. It truly is a free-form, fascinating way to engage with crafting and nature!
Materials, Temperatures Recorded, and Yardage
I chose to stash-bust my backlog of half-used acrylic skeins for a random color palette, but it can be whatever you like. You can use wool, cotton, or alpaca. You can plan an entire color palette that is unique to your design sensibility. I think an ombre in the same color family would be lovely if you can find the yarn swatches to do this. I think that with the right design eye, this usually random-looking project can look exquisitely planned out.
I believe the most important part of the project is getting the data recorded down into a spreadsheet or notebook, whatever fits your crafting style, so that you can see what temperature ranges are the most common and therefore which ranges will be the most common through the piece. I had a really tough time deciding this, and in hindsight, I wish I had tallied how many of each I had before knitting, because for one color, I almost ran out! It would have been so much easier to have swapped the colors I was using according to the yardage I had instead of choosing at random. I think that is why crafting practice and crafting community are so vital to this work, because sometimes you don’t know until you try, and sharing our experiences informs the greater knowledge for us all.
For my temperature data, I am an analog gal, so I recorded my temperature highs in a notebook and checked off each day as I went to keep track of my progress. I highly suggest doing this in some capacity because otherwise, you are going to have to count rows, and checking off progress in a spreadsheet or notebook is just quicker.
If you are a beginner knitter or crocheter, might I also recommend Caron or Big Twist acrylic yarn for this project? The value for yardage and lack of splitting of these yarns make a huge difference for a first crafting experience, so that this project easily transforms from a skein of yarn to a lovely blanket made with your own hands.
Would you make a temperature blanket? Have you ever tried to make one before? Did you enjoy your experience?
I’ve been looking at how to make a custom overalls pattern, based on drafting techniques, which I began with this post: Drafting Shortalls from Scratch. But how to construct them? Well, that’s what I plan to explore today! To do this, yesterday, I cut out another pair of overalls, this time for the fall-winter-spring season, to retrace my steps.
Step One
With your pieces cut out according to your measurements, you should have four leg pieces – two front and two back. The next two bib pieces should be cut out, with the back piece cut a bit differently to accommodate the straps. This is to anchor the straps at the middle of your shoulders to keep the overalls securely on your frame.
Step Two
I like to begin with the pants or shorts portion of an overall project, because they are foundational to the silhouette. I like to pin the leg pieces together to try on before sewing. Remember to leave several inches of the outer thigh seams pinned for the flies and buttons.
Once you know that the pieces will fit, with seam allowance accounted for, I begin sewing the leg pieces together, leaving out the crotch seam and the top part of the inseam, to attach the two pieces as one pair of pants. After these have been sewn together and I have tried them on, I will move on to the bib.
Step Three
For less bulk, I like to cut the seams of the crotch portion and leg seams that will join together, with pinking shears, to make my hems less thick. This lets the sewing machine, or your hand sewing needle, pass through the seam with ease, and is more comfortable to wear.
How do you join pants? Well, you leave the top of the inseam open so that those two inseams will line up together, making the two legs join at the top where the pelvis is. Remember this is a bifurcated garment, so you want your final shape to be two tubes, joined to make one tube at the top. I’ve messed this up several times; it’s okay even if you sew it wrong the first thousand times. That is what mockups and seam rippers are for!
Step Four
For the bib of these overalls pictured above, they were cut into short pieces, so I just had to join these pieces together. I added a facing to the inside of the bibs, which is just a piece of the fabric’s right side facing inside, so that the bibs are finished cleaner around the neckline.
I inserted the straps between the facing and the bib for a clean and secure stitch. The straps were finished with a loop on either side of the front bib to tie around, instead of the metal fastenings. I was inspired by Lucy and Yak Dungarees.
Step Five
The final touches are the bias tape, the side buttons, and the five pockets. I find the bias tape the most mundane thing; therefore, I choose to do that next, which is a 1-2″ ribbon of the fabric used to finish the raw edges still exposed on the sides.
Step Six
Next, I created the flies on either side by folding over the fabric to make the button placket and button hole placket. This was planned out when I cut out the overalls. After making the button holes and finishing them with either the machine or by hand, I mark out on the other side where the holes overlap to mark for buttons.
Step Seven
Finally, I sew the pockets. I chose a large, half-rounded bib pocket on the front, two smaller rectangle pockets on the backside, and medium side pockets sewn across the hip. Next? Enjoy your creation and feel a sense of accomplishment. You did something hard, and probably felt lost at times, but you persevered to learn a new skill. It’s not cringeworthy to try. So go for it! ❤
One Rabbit Riot 