Month: July 2022

I Made Jeans!

As Me Made May approached this year, I was reminded of the deficit of options for my lower half that I noticed last year.

I bought fabric for two pairs of jeans over a year ago, but I’ve been intimidated by the complexity of jeans design so it took me a while to find the nerve to cut my pants out. The fabric is 11.5 oz stretch denim from StyleMaker Fabrics. I (once again) riffed on the Cigarette Pants pattern from Gertie Sews Vintage Casual.

I started these jeans in December, got the fronts and backs assembled (including the zipper, which was intimidating and very puzzling), then realized that jeans need top-stitching, and put them away for a while.

A couple months later I pulled the jeans out of their hiding place and did all the top-stitching all at once, even though that was very much not the order it was supposed to be done in (and doing it out of order made it more difficult). Ideally I think you would want to sew jeans with two machines side by side: one to sew the seams with thread that matches your fabric, and one to top-stitch the seams with heavy jeans thread. That way you would save time and avoid the need to rethread your machine after every seam.

I am very pleased with the stitching on the pockets. I free-handed my design with chalk and was so pleased with the first pocket. Since it is a simple design I was able to replicate it on the second pocket pretty closely. Then I ironed the edges in and positioned them on the pants using the highly scientific method of holding the back up to myself, then putting my hand where I expected a pocket to be. I checked the position visually, made some adjustments, then did my best to mirror the position for the second pocket. I waited to sew the pockets on until I was convinced the position was correct for both.

With the fronts and backs assembled, it was time to sew the inseam. I sewed the seam and top-stitched it. Then I did a fitting to make sure the side seams fit well, and top-stitched the top 8 inches or so. This was a mostly uneventful process, but the lower leg is a little bit skewed because I needed to narrow the leg, but I didn’t want to undo my top-stitching. It is unnoticeable in the final garment unless you’re really looking for it.

Next I added the waistband. I cut a strip on the straight grain for a 1” waistband. As usual, I sewed the waistband onto the front of the pants, folded the raw edge under, and top-stitched around it with jeans thread. Then I did a machine buttonhole and added a jeans button. I accidentally snipped several of the buttonhole threads when I cut open the buttonhole, so I went over the buttonhole again by hand. I also had trouble with the jeans button and ended up needing to replace it. There is definitely some technique involved when securing a jeans buttonhole. Finally, I hemmed the pants to length, and they were done.

This was my first time making rigid pants, and the fit is very different than you get with a stretch denim or a ponte knit. But once I got past that difference, I found the pants to be pretty comfortable. I am so proud of myself for making these! There are definitely more me-made jeans in my future.

Finishing the Two-Year Baby Blanket

Two years ago I started knitting a blanket for my niece. I fell in love with the Vivid blanket by Tin Can Knits, knit 9 of 20 squares, then got bored and wandered off to sew something instead. The thing about baby blankets is that if you wait too long they’re not baby blankets anymore. They’re just really small.

Earlier this year I decided I was going to finally learn to crochet properly. I watched a few classes on CreativeBug and learned a lot. One of the classes was on the classic granny square, and my passionate and unreasonable love for this simple square was rekindled. I say passionate and unreasonable because at an earlier time in my life when I disliked all crochet, I somehow still thought the classic granny was beautiful and interesting. Granny squares are my bridge into the world of crochet.

After completing a test square I didn’t want to stop, but I also didn’t want to start a whole new project, so I hatched a plan to knit half the squares for the blanket and crochet the other half. The knitted squares resemble flowers to my eyes, and I wanted the crochet squares to echo the floral design. Where the knitted design uses texture (lace) to create a flower, I needed to use colour the make flowers on the crochet squares. Each granny square consists of 8 rounds: the center in one colour, the following 5 rounds in another to make the petals of the flower, and 2 rounds of border in a third colour.

It only took me a few weeks to crochet my 10 squares. Then I knit the last square, and the quilt was ready for assembly!

Before sewing everything together I had to decide on a layout. This may have been the toughest part of the blanket, but I finally settled on a design I was happy with.

Once I had decided on a layout I sewed the squares together in strips, then sewed the strips together to form the blanket, using whip stitches throughout. The knit and crochet squares had very nearly the same number of stitches per side even though the granny squares appeared smaller. I clipped each pair of squares together in the middle and at the end, and sewed one stitch to one stitch as much as possible, skipping a stitch here and there as needed.

With the blanket in one piece I had to decide on a border. I swatched a few knit and crochet borders as you can see above. I was specifically looking for a chevron shape to echo the knitted lace. I decided on the crochet lace on the left. I liked it best, and I’m in a crochet mood right now, so it’s more likely to get done than knittted lace is at the moment.

I worked a round of single crochet around the blanket in preparation for the fancy border.

Then I worked the border in white. The border is worked in two steps: crochet shells, then single crochet over top of the shells to make them pointy rather than rounded. I used the border instructions from this blog post by Crochet 365, Knit too.

I love how the border and the blanket as a whole turned out! It took me much longer than I wanted, but the recipient is two, so she won’t know the difference.