In which I learn to knit toe-up socks.

I am very excited that I have finally learned how to do toe-up socks. I tried several times in the past but became too frustrated. I have always given up, ripped it out and started again from the top. Yesterday, I did it and it looks o.k.! Some of the stitches aren't quite even around the toe but it is passable.

I found these instructions to be helpful : Eastern cast-on.

But Lord help me, this is superfine yarn on size one needles. TINY! 72 stitches per round. This will take some time.

I have used self-stripping yarns before without success. The people I knit for have big feet and the strips usually wind up looking more like splotches or puddles. I am hopeful that this particular yarn will turn out to be stripy. So far, not too bad.

Giving up on Etsy

As you might have guessed, I have lost steam and excitement about selling on Etsy. In all honesty, I think my designs are too traditional and time-consuming to do well on this venue. I think I will be using this blog to document the crafty things I do from now on.

I am gearing up for Christmas. Traditionally I make many of the family gifts. So, I will not be able to post pictures of them until after they have been given. I have several relatively big projects planned. I am already worried about finishing on time.

365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs: Day 78 - Bleeding Heart

365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs: Day 78 - Bleeding Heart

New mittens for my kittens.

These are new pink mittens I just knit for Deborah. I washed her old ones and they shrunk.
For my birthday, my family gave me Ann Budd's book Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns . (Actually, I bought it and told them to hide it till my birthday.) This was the first project I made from the book and it turned out great. I found the book VERY easy to follow. The mitten on her right hand looks bigger because it is. I didn't follow the directions. It is actually the second one I knit and was out and about, waiting for the kids and going by my memory.... which I should know by now NOT to do!
It's only slightly longer and her hands will only grow.

Computer frustrations

I just spent and incredible amount of time trying to figure out Twitter. I have a FB page with my Etsy name which is linked to both my blog and my personal page/wall. I think what else I need is a Etsy Mini on both facebook and my blog. I'm wondering if having a separate 'page' on FB just for my Etsy stuff is too confusing. Is it confusing? Maybe it should just all go to my Etsy shop?

How to find out?

Is this why no one has been visiting my shop?

KinderRose: Toilet paper to the rescue!

KinderRose: Toilet paper to the rescue!

Toilet paper to the rescue!

Yikes! this dress was hard to photograph. All my pictures were flat and blurry. Daylight or artifical light didn't make a difference. I finally settled for laying the dress on the floor. It still looked flat. So I stuffed the sleeves and yoke with toilet paper!

I especially like this picture with the flannel pants. Looks so warm and cozy!

This close-up of the yoke turned out pretty well too.

Tea and the green dress

Today Deborah and I had tea at the library. We heard Laura Schaefer read and talk about her new book The Teashop Girls. It was so great for Deborah to meet a real published author. And she is a local Madisonian. Both Deborah and I read the book beforehand. I think it was fun for her to read about girls in our own town with references to places we know about. She was such a friendly lady, I hope her books do well and she writes many more.


The green dress is almost done! Just buttons and buttonholes left to do, hopefully tonight won't be too crazy and I can get them done.

I added a lace ruffle around the circular flat lace.

The sleeves are smocked with the same colors as the neckline.  I added 1 1/2 inches to the sleeve length, folded that extra up and ran the bottem edge of the sleeve through the pleater. That way the edge of the sleeve looks finished. Then when I closed up the underarm seam with french seams I made sure the end of the first seam was securly tucked inside the second seam.

I hand stitched the four-inch deap hem. This way it can easily be let down as the child grows. Corduroy tends to leave a mark when you let out the hem. Sometimes I would tack on a matching ribbon or lace around the hem line on Deborah's dresses. I thought it looked more finished and less noticable that the hem had been let out.

SAGANews: Saturday Already?

SAGANews: Saturday Already?

My secret other lives.

I actually have three lives that I live simultaneously. 

1) I am a wife and mother to two children.

2) I am a classically trained professional musician.

3) I have a sewing business.

Recently I have been having trouble deciding which hat I have on at any given moment. And they do overlap. My son is tall and skinny. After hours of searching the stores for jeans, we gave up and bought some denim material and I made him a pair. They still need some tweaking, poor kid. But I have dresses to make for my Etsy store!

I played in a string quartet for a wedding this weekend. I am forever depressed by how frumpy I have become. I prefer to be comfortable and my 'comfortable' clothes are sweats. Even my dressy black is getting old and frumpy. So I took time out from my sewing business (and my family) to try my hand at a pair of pants for myself. Here's the result.

A little blurry but it's very difficult to take your own picture!

Today I am focusing on the shop and baby clothes. I have ideas for FIVE different warm, winter dresses. The first is this kelly green corduroy with white lace. So far just the yoke is done.

I originally planned to put the lace on by machine. After pinning it on the yoke, I realized it would be so much easier just to whip it down by hand. 

The embroidery I kind of made up as I went, eye-balling the green curvy line then putting three red french knots in each curve.

KinderRose: "Better-Than-Tights" pants

KinderRose: "Better-Than-Tights" pants

These pants are so soft and comfy!

Now available on my Etsy Shop in three sizes.

www.KinderRose.Etsy.com

"Better-Than-Tights" pants

My daughter and I share a mutual dislike for tights! I hated them when I was a kid, still do. She hated them. And how do you get tights on a squirming child? But I had made some very fancy dresses for her to wear in the cold Illinois winters. My solution: "Dress" pants, as she called them. 

They are made of soft, white flannel. All seams are enclosed French seams. And the lace around the ankle is so sweet.

Better pictures to come tomorrow, with daylight!
With those better pictures will be a new listing on my Etsy sight :
www.KinderRose.Etsy.com

Holiday Season!

I have decided it is time to get ready for the holiday season. Seems early but if I start now I should be able to get several dresses out soon. I already have three definite ideas. Nice warm, soft corduroy and flannel, with lace, of course. And I found the cutest fabric! A border print with Santa on it. Lots of ideas!

Pictures to come soon...

KinderRose: Polka-dot Bishop constructions

This dress's construction and the rest of my blog can be found at www.kinderrose.blogspot.com

They are part of my Etsy Store at
www.kinderrose.etsy.com

Polka-dot Bishop finished!

Wew! Here it is. It took longer than I thought it would but I like the way it turned out.

All these pictures can be seen in full view by clicking on them.

I'll start backwards...

Today I spent several hours perfecting my handmade buttonholes. Some may ask "Why?" Well, about six years ago I bought a very nice Bernina Sewing machine and one of the selling points of this particular one was the built in button hole feature with several options. I went to the instructional classes and have read the books but have never been completely satisfied with the machine buttonholes I was making. Today, I can say that the four buttonholes on the back of this dress are the best-looking buttonholes I have ever made on a garment. Unfortunately, I don't know how to take a good close-up picture of these beautiful buttonholes. But here is the back view.

The hem is scalloped. I always like the way these hems turn out. Seems worth the extra effort. It is hand stitched with a running stitch from the back. I used DMC floss the same pink used in the smocking around the neck and arms.

The inside seams are enclosed french seams, even the ones behind the smocking as noted in the previous blog post.

The smocking is done with pink, white, and purple DMC floss. I buried the knots of the smocking between the pleats. Otherwise they may scratch baby's sensitive skin.

The sleeves are smocked with the same colors as around the neck. Cluny lace was attached to the sleeve edge by hand at the same time I hand sewed the hem of the sleeve.

Polka-dot Bishop constructions

Today I was very happy to find that the new technique I was trying for this smocked bishop worked beautifully! The idea is not to pleat over the thicker french seams where the sleeves connect to the front and back of the dress. You roll the back, sleeve, front, other sleeve, and other back pieces through the pleater one after the other but without seaming them together. Then, when the smocking is done, you take out the pleater threads and sew up the seams. I still wanted french seams but I had 3/8 inch seam allowances. I ended up cutting one seam allowance to 1/8th of an inch and folding the other seam allowance over twice on top of it, then sewing it down by hand. The seam was very tiny!

But look how nice the smocking looks. One can't even see where the four seams are!

I hope to have this dress on my Etsy shop tomorrow.

First item on Etsy

I just posted the pink daygown on Etsy. It took longer than I thought it would to set up the store and get the photos the correct size, etc. But I am now officially a seller on Etsy.

I have started the next dress. This one is a smocked bishop with short sleeves. I debated about long or short sleeves in my mind for some time but decided to go with the short sleeves. They look so sweet. And not everywhere is as cold as Wisconsin! That's the wonderful thing about the internet.

Here is a picture of the dress cut out.

It is pink polka-dots on white background. Very cute. I am planning to smock it in pink and have a hand sewn scalloped hem.

Pink Daygown

Here is my first dress for KinderRose. I am still not completely satisfied with the photos. But they are getting better. Double click on each to see more details. Suggestions are welcome!

This little pink daygown is made out of buttery soft flannel cotton. It has five tucks on each side of three pink embroidered roses and a lace ruffle around the neck. The hem is done by hand with matching embroidery floss.

I wanted to make this as cozy as possible for baby. I made all the seams enclosed french seams with cotton thread so nothing will poke baby's skin. The embroidery uses no knots, the ends of the threads are woven back in on themselves. The lace around the neck has a flannel band between baby so as not to be scratchy.

The picture below shows the INSIDE of the gown.

Photographing Baby Dresses

I have tried twice now to take pictures of my first dress. I am not happy with the quality of the pictures. They are blurry and unprofessional. I think in this situation, selling online, the pictures are so important to show your product.

I have spent the past two days reading our camera instructional book. Pretty dry reading! But I do have a better idea of how to take more focused pictures manually. Today I will try again.

My sales permit from the State of Wisconsin came yesterday. Legally I can start selling!

Who knew naming a business would be so hard?

Naming this sewing business turned out to be more difficult than one might expect. Since I have decided to sell through Etsy, I had to have the name approved through their web site.

First, I thought a lot about what I want to create. I want to make baby dresses that are constructed well and go the extra mile to be comfortable for the baby. Some things I learned from my own kids; like all cotton material and cotton thread, and enclosed seams that won't scratch or poke at baby's delicate, soft skin. I also love to smock and embroider roses on my baby clothes.

When I googled roses, I found that there is a rare lavender rose that has the meaning of enchantment or love at first sight. I liked the idea that people would fall in love with my baby dresses. Unfortunatly, every name I tried relating to 'lavender rose' was already taken on Etsy.

After stewing over it for several days, I had it boiled down to 'Enchanted Rose', 'Embroidered Rose', or 'Kinder Rose'. All of these were available at the time on Etsy. Enchanted Rose reminded me of Disney's Beauty and the Beast and I was afraid other people would have as much trouble as I do remembering how to spell embroidered. So Kinder Rose it is!