Embellished

I haven't made much progress on anything significant the last week or so, like my outerwear plans or making more tunics. I did, however, start and finish two little projects, both of which made use of more embellishment than I usually do.

First of all, another Grainline Linden sweater. Late in the summer, I made a green and white raglan top and at the time I mentioned I'd noticed that mixed fabric/embellished raglan tops seemed to be something I was pinning a lot on Pinterest. I used this image to show the sort of thing I had been interested in:

Some raglan tops from my Pinterest collection (again)

This time, I used the photo in the upper left for inspiration, with the mix of knit and lace. My top is made with a very fine black knit (the same knit I used on last week's Ottobre top) with an extra layer of a stretch black crochet/lace knit in the front and back bodice only.

Is there anything less rewarding than taking photos of black clothes? (Grainline Linden with crochet lace overlay and black knit -- if you click on the image the lace detail will actually be visible when the image is larger!)

It seemed like most RTW I glanced at with a similar design just put the lace on the front, presumably in an effort to decrease their fabric use. I didn't have anything in mind for the rest of the fabric and I thought it would look nicer on both sides. I made the top exactly as usual, and just treated a layer of the black knit and the lace as a single piece of fabric when I was sewing. This was unproblematic except that it made for an interesting experience sewing the band at the bottom since I had quite the sandwich of fabric layers going on. I had to recut the bottom band and try again because it went a bit wrong the first time, but my struggles are not evident in the finished product. Overall, I'm really pleased with how this turned out.

My second embellishment project was also fairly straightforward. If you've read this blog for a while you'll know I've been passingly interested in the Alabama Chanin books/techniques. I keep meaning to make an actual AC knit garment just to see how I like it. (I have to be honest, I have major doubts that I don't think I'll clear up until I actually give making a wearable garment a fair shot.) One of the things the book tells you to do is stencil in your design onto the fabric with fabric paint before you start sewing/embroidering/whatever. Stencilling is not something I have ever done before, so I decided to do a mini stencilling-only project first.

Things I used on my scarf

Thus: One pot of grey fabric paint. One cosmetic sponge (from a large bag of them from the £1 shop). One large black fabric scarf purchased from eBay direct from China for 99p. One simple stencil from the first Alabama Chanin book, transferred onto template plastic because I thought the cardboard would go soggy if I used the one in the book.

I quickly hit on a technique for splodging the paint through the template. I decided to do a sort of border print along the short edges of the scarf, but other than that I made no attempt to plan out the actual layout of the stencil. I just tried to fit it the stencil in at different angles somewhat organically as I was going along.

Finished stencil painted scarf

And here is the finished product! I definitely learned some things about stenciling from doing this that I plan to carry over to an actual AC garment, and I like my finished scarf as well.

Next up: the weather having finally become somewhat autumnal this week, I am in a hurry to make more tunic length tops so I can actually start using the jeggings I bought. I will probably be focusing on that over the next couple of weeks. On the plus side, that means lots of fun new patterns for me. On the minus side, lots of fun new patterns means lots of my least favourite sewing job: tracing and/or cutting out patterns.