The true power of Needlework – calming down with Lisette blouse and Mezzo cardigan
Last Monday we had a much-needed conversation about support and connection in the @needleworkmonday community and the respond to @crosheille’s wonderful post was overwhelmingly positive and understanding. We all planned to connect more with each other and to shift the focus of the needlework community back to the crafts itself and the people behind it, away from trying to get the biggest reward.
So, I will follow this spirit and show a real Monday, you know the Monday after the Sunday
• where your husband had worked the whole night because of an important date (on Monday),
• your garden neighbors transformed into tree hating monsters and wanted us to cut all trees on our side (but they let their ugly poison ivy grow over into our garden and we simply cut it ourselves),
• the Monday after again a week full of migraines
• and a Monday which followed a whole week where I tried to send Silvia (with whom I prepare an exhibition in August) photos and videos of my artworks and the internet decided to not comply? It even spoke to me in a very deep and dark voice and said „Dear Lady, if you want me to send your files you should sacrifice your firstborn, pay a lot more money for a better bandwidth, move into a country where they have broadband internet coverage“
Yes, such a Monday…. A Monday which reveals the true power of needlework, because I countered every hindrance with simply starting a new project to calm myself :-DDDD Over the last week I am now the happy owner of more unfinished project and no, neither of these projects are the grey moss stitch cardigan I wrote last week about nor the knitted cardigan pattern I actually wanted to design (you know, the one I have written two post about here and here 😂).
(If you want to read about the designing process of a knitted cardigan then hop to @shanibeer‘s newest post
Another Lisette blouse
The first new project is another Lisette blouse, the raglan design with bow tie from the magazine La Maison Victor. I made this blouse from an old bedsheet some weeks ago and the finished blouse fitted nicely and was not too hard to make.
Although I was not fabric shopping for a loooooong time (because of the Corona problems here) I still have some fabrics in my stash. Mostly these are lovely woven fabrics with flower designs perfect for summer garments, sadly they are also very small scraps. Therefore, there is no chance I can wriggle a skirt or even a dress out of them, but a short-sleeved blouse, this will work (so my thoughts).
The fabric which I wanted to sew with for a long time has this lovely green flower design and is super soft and lightweight. The downside is the huge hole in the fabric which makes it small amount even smaller. But you know me, I am the master of pattern tetris and so I managed to arrange all pattern pieces on this small scrap of fabric (yeahhhhh 🎉). I had to compromise on the long tie; it will have seams as I cut it out of several shorter pieces… Now the downside: the cutting was gruesome. The fabric is so slippery, I had real problems to get an even cut (I didn’t). I hope this will not be a problem once I start to sew the blouse…
The Mezzo crochet cardigan (free pattern)
On to the next calming project (remember I am only starting so many new things to calm myself, so I do not kill the garden neighbors or unearth the internet cable in front of our apartment) a crochet cardigan. Yes you heard right, a crochet cardigan, not a knitted one :-DDD For some weeks now a new cardigan design is popping up in my instagram feed and after seeing one of my fibre friends picking this up in a lovely purple yarn, I couldn’t resist any longer. It has such a lovely stitch pattern with puff stitches and a new to me construction (I only saw this construction for baby cardigans so far). The whole cardigan is made from two hexagons.
Wow. (Ok, wow for me… perhaps you are much more skilled in crochet and already made several hexagon cardigans, but bear with me, I am new to this).
At first, I could not understand how a complete cardigan can be formed by theses unruly not flat laying pieces of crochet. I was really curious… so I fetched some yarn which nearly fitted the yarn recommended by the designer (not easy to notice for you, but this is actually irony, as the pattern called for a lovely bamboo/cotton mix yarn with a light sheen and a soft drape and I again used my cheap thick acrylic stash yarn :-D) and started my first rounds of the hexagon.
So far, the process reminds me of a granny square only with two more sides 😀 It is worked in the round and the hexagon grows with every row as you increase in the corners. I worked 9 rows (the amount the pattern calls for to measure gauge) and meanwhile I understand how the hexagon is folded to form one half of a cardigan.
From now on the pattern will be a bit more complicated as you should work different stitches into the different sides of the cardigan, hence the labels for each side. I am very curious how this is coming along.
If you are interested the pattern is a free one and can be found on the website Make and Do Crew, but you’ll can also buy an ad free pdf and support the designer Jess Coppom (who is really worth checking out because her other designs are also lovely).
So dear readers my pile of unfinished projects is constantly growing and I thought perhaps we should start to bet which of my billion projects will get done first :-DDD
And as always, I need a bit of help: although I accidentally chose a blouse fabric which harmonizes with the yarn I have used for the cardigan, I am not too happy with the latter. The acrylic yarn is super warm and does not have a nice stitch definition nor drape and I think the cardigan will not be very practical: too much holes for winter, too thick yarn for summer. So, I am pondering to unravel the hexagon and start anew with a different yarn…
What do you think shall I unravel or proceed with the purple yarn?
Thank you @crosheille for initiating and @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday and the community builder team @lauramica, @romeskie and @kattycrochet I am so glad to be part of.
If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday on hive blog. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community. You can read more comments on this post on my hive blog.
Read more about my art und upcoming exhibitions on neumannsalva or buy some of my digital artworks on NFT showroom.