Making the Seasons :: September

By the time you read this, Yarndale will have been and gone and I'll most likely be collapsed in an unglorious heap. The weeks leading up to Yarndale are incredibly busy and full on for me, and I generally get through September feeling like I am clinging on by my fingertips. The juggling of my responsibilities can be overwhelming to be honest, but I try and take it in stride and not let myself get swept up in too much anxiety. I've been kept very busy working on the big Creative Community display for the festival which this year is all about butterflies. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who made and sent butterflies for Yarndale (360 of you joined in - thank you!!!) - I've taken lots of photos to share with you next week.

Being up to my eyes in colourful butterflies for much of this month has meant that I've not had the time to do my Making the Seasons project. Wah!!!! I'm so disappointed that I haven't managed it (despite trying to be uber-organsied and planning it out well in advance this month), but that's just the way it is sometimes. So I thought I'd show you a little of my thinking/inspiration right now, with a view to actually getting creative in early October once life returns to more of an even keel. 

You may remember a few weeks ago I shared my crochet coat hanger project with you? Oh, that was such a delightful and spontaneous bit of hooky delight! I loved making it, and have been admiring it hanging on the back of my door ever since. I made the coat hanger specifically to act as a pretty prop for this upcycling project that I had in mind - I got it into my head that I wanted to have a go at jazzing up an old cardigan with a bit of colourful decoration. 

At the start of the month I searched on eBay for some likely woolly candidates - I wanted a plain coloured cardigan with pockets that I could add some embroidery to. After much crossing of fingers and some optimistic bidding, I failed miserably on eBay and lost all of the bids on all of the cardigans in spectacular fashion. So I decided to go on  a little charity shop run instead, and the Gods of Unloved Items must have been looking after me because they delivered an absolute beauty right into my hands in the very first shop I looked in.

I snagged this lovely teal coloured lambswool jumper for a very acceptable £3.99 in the British Heart Foundation shop, and I pretty much skipped out of there with a massive grin on my face. Hazzah!!! Who needs eBay with it's vastly over priced auction goods?!!!!!

The cardigan in question is of good quality and a lovely colour, but when I showed it triumphantly to Little Lady she raised her eyebrows and pronounced it "fit for an old granny". I admit the buttons are a little old fashioned, and most likely a Teen isn't going to think much of a second hand v neck woolly cardy, but I have great plans in my head for this garment. Granny Chic is within my grasp!

First thing I did was to search out some new buttons. I absolutely love love love cardigans with quirky mismatched buttons, always have done and probably always will. I searched on Amazon for something suitable and found myself paddling in a whole huge sea of button choices - so many buttons to go at! after much deliberation I decided on these little 15mm wooden buttons so that I could keep the size/shape of the button uniform but mix and match the patterns.

They are seriously cute, just look!

Here is the cardigan in all it's granny-ish glory. I've decided not to do anything too radical to it - all I really want to do is change up the buttons and put something pretty on the pockets.

I've long been a fan of folk-art style embroidery, and this lovely teal colour makes the perfect backdrop for some folksy flowers I think. Let me show you what I mean.......

.....I know these are mittens, but the woolly embroidery is just so gorgeous, don't you agree? And you can see how this might work on the pockets of my cardy? I can see it!! I want to do it so badly!!

These mittens are the work of Nienke Landman who lives and works in the Netherlands (I think. I'm pretty sure her blog is written in Dutch). I first came across her on Instagram - her photos are an absolute inspirational delight and never fail to make me swoon with pleasure. This lady is so talented! She knits and crochets and embroiders the most wonderful, colourful things, and images of her lifestyle do something to my heart which makes it feel like it's being squeezed. It makes me feel excited, emotional and full of joy, and maybe just a little bit in love with it all. Please do go peek at her Instagram feed and take a little scroll, you will see what I mean I'm sure. And as an extra bonus, there is a most charming video to watch too. It's beautiful. All of it swoon-worthy. 

Out of all the beautiful images by Mooi Van Draad, it's these embroidered woollen mittens and gloves which I have fallen deeply in love with. The stitches are simple but so beautifully done, and the sweet little colourful folksy designs have captured my heart.

Incidentally, as I was drinking in all the images, I came across one of a stitching-in-progress (SIP?!) and was intrigued to see that she uses something that looks like a thin soluble fabric to stitch over? I guess it means you can draw out the design on the soluble fabric, embroider onto it, then dissolve the fabric away in water when you're done. I've never tried this technique, does anyone have any experience of it? I'm going to investigate where I can find this magic!!

As you will probably know, once you get sunk into researching something like this, it's like tumbling down a majorly huge rabbit hole. I got stuck in Pinterest for all eternity (well a good hour, maybe more), chasing links and clicking away on a gazillion images of woolly embroidery. The above mitts caught my eye and I tracked them down to Ravelry - they are called Dala-Floda mittens which for some inexplicable reason makes me want to snort with laughter. I'm sure there's a meaningful translation behind those words, but they sound so comical to my English ears. 

At the very end of my Pinterest marathon, I found these embroidered leg warmers which made me gasp out loud - OH!!!!! SO so so beautiful!! Although to be honest I think I would prefer to see these on my arms rather than down there on my legs. They really are lovely, and I feel very inspired to try designing some woolly embroidery pocket motifs.

So that's pretty much where I'm up to as of now - I'm itching to get my stitchy fingers going with this, hopefully in the next few weeks once I've recovered from Yarndale. I'm going to try and find out more about the soluble embroidery fabric, and gather together some suitable yarn (I'm thinking 4ply merino - I've got a stash of this in my studio). I'll be sure to post a MTS : September : Part 2 post to share the outcome of the Granny Cardy - I hope after all this sharing that it's going to work out - no pressure or anything!

Gillian and I are almost at the end of our Making The Seasons year with just one more month left to go....do pop over to her beautiful blog and see what she has been up to in September, it's very inspirational.

You can find all my previous Making The Seasons posts {{ here }}. 

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Comments

[Kris Price]

Here is a link full of information about how to use the Sulky Sticky Fabri Solvy - https://bustleandsew.com/embroidery/transferring-your-emroidery-pattern-using-sulky-sticky-fabri-solvy/

Here is something else you might have fun making sometime in the future (and there is more info about the Fabri Solvy near the bottom!) - I hope to make these ornaments next year sometime. http://mmmcrafts.blogspot.com/p/twelve-days.html

[Meg]

I love all those beautiful butterflies! They remind me of my lacy butterfly, tatted by an elderly Italian Nonna who was selling them in the doorway of her home on one of Venice's islands. I bought just one and every year I put it up on our Christmas tree as a memory. Meg:)

[Vicky]

Hi Lucy
The soluble embroidery fabric you mentioned is available on Amazon (of course!), it’s called “Sulky Solvy Water Soluble Stabilizer”. I used some last year, it was pretty good although you need to be careful which pen you use to draw your design, as you don’t want pen to bleed onto the actual fabric when you come to dissolve the Sulky. I have seen patterns that say you can feed it through a printer but I didn’t dare do that in case it gummed up my printer! The stuff I got was self adhesive so once I had drawn the design I stuck it to the felt, embroidered, then washed it away. I think non-adhesive is also available.
Best of luck with your cardigan, what a lovely idea x

[Jeanette Renting]

Yes, Nienke Landman lives in the Netherlands, in Zwolle.
She even wrote a book.
Oh, I'm curious about your cardigan.
Can't wait to see it.

[Gillian Roe]

Oh my goodness Lucy, I am LOVING those folksy woollen embroideries so much! I want to embroider some mittens right now, and you are right, that style will be just perfect on that cardigan. Thanks for showing us your thought process and all those lovely links - I can't wait to see the finished result. xx