oh hai blog

Hi friends. Happy New Year! Happy goal setting month, happy arbitrary but often useful fresh start for big dreams and reflection and (hopefully) new inspiration. We traveled so much over Christmas, from here in NC to both families, to Atlanta and Nashville and I feel like the new year is already way back into the swing of things overall. It’s exciting! It can feel overwhelming, too, but I’m choosing to lean into what Elise Joy talks about in her Love to Sew podcast episode and rather than get overwhelmed by all the possibilities of all the things - get excited about the fact that there are SO MANY THINGS to be inspired by and want to take on this year.

I’d love to say that making this blog a more relevant part of my online presence is a goal of mine (and back of my mind, it definitely IS), but no promises friends. 2018 brought on a new job for me, a new workout routine that I love, a new schedule for my husband and his work, lots of travel and I honestly don’t see any of that really changing much in 2019. Except for hopefully the new job thing, because I am in a really good place with my work. :)

At the same time, the end of the year brought on quite a few new personal things for me in the way of tackling a LOT of anxiety about my stage of life, what I am accomplishing and what makes a meaningful life. Right around that time I also read this incredible post from The Craft Sessions about the meaningful work of making. I clapped, I exclaimed, I cried a little bit. It is so good y’all. If you are a maker in any capacity, I highly encourage you to check it out. And maybe bookmark it for those days when you get discouraged by just another individual being bewildered by your passion for anything that they consider to be “just a hobby”. I know I have.

So I do have some intentions that I’d like to share with you all at this beginning of the new year. I find this to be much more helpful and doable than putting a number on specific goals when I’m juggling quite a few things. It includes the excitement and the motivation for the new year while removing the potential guilt of not meeting some arbitrary number of things that I decided in the dead of winter to do.

• The first is to document more of my work in an intentional way. Not sure yet whether that will mean this space, Ravelry, doing more general posting in my Instagram feed or perhaps collections of Instagram stories? At the end of the year I was trying to go through and get a full collection of my finished works for the year and discovered that while my making was very much a regular practice in my life, my documentation was not.

• Don’t buy any new fabric. For how periodically I sew, I have a really good size stash of fabrics and I’m ready to figure out which patterns they want to be and go for it. This was clarified after a recent incredible fabric sale at the Scrap Exchange and an amazing workshop on planning a handmade wardrobe by River Takada-Capel at Freeman’s Creative. Although there is some pretttttty incredible silk noil on Blackbird Fabrics that is reallllly calling to me right now…

• Go beyond the boxy top. 2018 was my first year with a really amazing sewing machine (I love my Janome Magnolia). So, I made a jacket and a pair of pants and felt like a badass (Note, I am still actually pretty far from being a sewing badass by my own estimation, but the feeling was real great). AND - all of the early sewing projects that I tackled, some variation on the basic boxy top, are not things I regularly wear. When I consider what makes me feel confident, I definitely still come back to waist-defining or some sort of fitted garment so that’s ultimately what I need to be sewing as well! Some ideas that are percolating in my head are the Adria top, Hinterland dress (yay Durham!), Tea House dress, and the Scarborough Fair skirt or something similar. I would also love to make another pair of Winslow culottes in a longer length and elastic waist and an unlined version of the Wiksten Haori jacket in something that involves swiss dots.

• Steek a sweater! This one is already in progress!

• And related to this, flex my creative knitting muscles more this year. I love a good, mindless sweater knit or a vanilla sock probably more than anything, and while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, I have several really exciting projects I’d like to tackle this year that will require more brain power, and I want to lean into this.

I’m really happy to have this space on the internet to come back to, and I hope that in some small way, my sharings here bring some joy to you and spark inspiring ideas for all that this new year will hold.

Building a wardrobe: 2018.5.20 Winslow Culottes

Feeling ever emboldened by my success with the Wiksten Kimono Jacket, I finally felt confident to consider sewing myself a pair of pants (!!), specifically, the Winslow Culottes. Let me preface this by saying that culottes are perhaps the most forgiving pattern one could possibly choose when it comes to actual sizing for the lower half of your body while still claiming to be pants, which for me was exactly what I needed. Pants and I have always had a difficult relationship, my hip to waist to thigh ratio being a bit...dramatic. For this project, however, the cut of the pants are so flowy that you don't actually need to measure anything but your waist! Curvy girls rejoice. 

I cut the second length of these and they hit almost perfectly at the knee, using a drapey fabric that I can't quite identify that I purchased a while back from The Scrap Exchange. The directions for this pattern were extremely straightforward, but for difficult moments Helen's Closet also hosted an incredibly helpful Winslow Culottes Sewalong that I highly recommend for anyone who is considering sewing the pattern. It was my first time using my invisible zipper foot and save for a slight issue at the beginning that was quickly solved with my seam ripper, totally doable! My only other regret was not using paper-backed interfacing. I had a bear of a time trying to incorporate interfacing that wanted to cling to everything it touched as soon as an iron came near and would recommend you use a good-quality, stiff interfacing for the waistband unlike what I chose. 

This pattern is extremely wearable and has already been a go-to piece for my summer wardrobe! They give me the practicality of pants while acting, and often looking like, a skirt. Win win win. For the fall I would love to figure out a way to cut a stretchier black knit version of these in a longer length, perhaps with the gathered waistband hack that Helen graciously provided as well. 

knit year resolutions 2016

We're nearly 1/12th of the way through 2016 and here I am, just now getting to publishing my new year's resolutions. As they say, better late than never!

This year I'm very excited to not only grow Goodstitch a lot and grow as a fiber artist, I want to leave a lot of room for experimentation, new techniques and crafts, while also diving deeper. 2015 was a lot of "What is it that I want to do?" and so for 2016 I'm thinking a lot more about, "How can I do what I'm doing better?" I know this year will bring so many surprises and changes, with the Mr. finishing up medical school and finding out where we'll be for the next 4 years for residency, and I'm excited to grow through those changes and also, to leave room for surprises and new desires because of those changes. As far as skills and techniques go, here are some things I would love to accomplish this year: 

• Sew 5 pieces by the summertime for my wardrobe. Part of this has to do with skill development, and part of it has to do with making clothes that fit the way that I am comfortable, and embracing my body for however it is!
• Sew a lap quilt. We are a ways a way from thinking about kids, but I'd love to be able to sew and quilt as one of my life-long goals for my children someday. So baby steps! (No pun intended)
• Knit my 2nd sweater. It's hard to believe that it was last summer that I made my first one! I have 2 sweater's quantities of yarn in my stash right now that I'd love to dig into!
• Knit Brandon a sweater. Because once you're married, the boyfriend sweater curse gets lifted, and also because this guy is the greatest and deserves a handknit sweater!
• Knit socks for exercising. Perfect short little projects, exercising motivation through knitting. Hoping this will be a way to trick myself into running more often. :)
• Keep building relationships in my fiber community. One of my biggest blessings in 2015 FOR SURE, and I'm excited to keep on connecting with new makers and getting to know the ladies in my knit group more, building community with people who share my passions near and far. 

I'd love to hear about your maker's resolutions, share if you have one that you're really excited about in 2016! 

sewing stitches: fen dress

Pattern: Fen by Fancy Tiger Crafts, View B with optional pockets and sleeves

One of my first finished makes of 2016! Fen is a beginner's sewing pattern that has options for a top and a dress, long sleeves or short sleeves, rounded top or v-neck, so I knew I would get a lot of use out of purchasing this one pattern. A few weeks ago I got the help from some lovely women at Downtown Knits in Apex, NC and after much deliberation, picked out this beautiful chambray (because I definitely don't have enough chambray in my closet already). Being a beginning sewist, I wanted to make sure my lines looked sharp, but didn't pop too much, so a coordinating blue cotton thread was what I chose to sew with it. 

Sewing, unlike other crafts, is not something that has come particularly easy to me. My lines tend to be imprecise, and being a lefty, I never developed fantastic scissors skills, both of which are pretty essentials skills when garment sewing. Ha! After taking a full week to trace, cut, and sew this lovely garment, I'm convinced that I'm probably the slowest sewist out there. The pattern was very straightforward to trace and cut, however, and I'm sure someone with better skills or a more experienced hand would fly through these steps much more quickly. The sewing itself was fairly straightforward, the only real problem area being the binding around the neckline. I had a hard time visualizing exactly what I was supposed to be doing with it, and ended up improvising a bit. Amber from Fancy Tiger Crafts was very helpful in describing what the neckline was supposed to look like, and on my next Fen I think I'll be a lot more successful. 

Favorite parts of this dress are definitely the sleeves and pockets. The sleeves are a perfect 3/4 length and the pockets are super sturdy. I just love dresses with pockets! I was able to sew the skirt, pockets, sleeves and finish the dress all in one night, and was so encouraged by how easy the skirt was to make so professional and clean-looking. Not all of my lines were so lucky ;)

This is a dress I hope I'm going to get a LOT of wear out of, and I'm grateful to have finished it during the crazy snowstorm that left me stranded on the top of the hill at our house for the past few days. Spinning and knitting are re-commencing this week, with many fun and exciting projects ahead!

Slow Fashion October: You

Hey friends! This month, in addition to all of my normal postings, I'm going to be doing something a little bit different added to the mix. Karen Templer of Fringe Association had this great idea a couple of months ago to have a whole month dedicated to slow fashion - the idea that the clothes that we wear can be made intentionally, beautifully, ethically and sustainably. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you probably have picked up that this idea is one that really resonates with me (and you can read a much more eloquent explanation of this whole idea here.). 

So it's the first day of October (yay!) and so about once every week or so I'll be posting a new post around the general template that Karen has laid out.  This should be fun!

So, a little more background on me as a maker. I've been a crafty-type person pretty much my whole life, starting from a young age when my family would take extensive car trips across the country. My parents, desperate to entertain us four kids for several days in the car, equipped us with every sort of kit and activity you could imagine. For me, that meant everything from crochet to knitting with this strange round circular contraption, to needlepoint and cross stitch and latch-hooking and many others. My mother and I also used to sew clothes for my American girl dolls, and I got my first sewing machine when I was 13. Sewing kind of came in and out of my life through high school and out for a while in college, and I have just recently started sewing my own garments as well as a few random household objects. 

My knitting journey started in high school in Florida when a friend of mine in my IB program taught me how to knit. I loved it so much, I knit and eventually started to crochet all through high school and college. But it wasn't until I moved to North Carolina two and a half years ago that my fiber obsession really began and my queue of projects really developed into a full-blown lifestyle. In that time I was introduced to wool in all of its beauty, attended the NY Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, NY (and am going back this year!) and started to learn about the process of making yarn. My eyes were opened to the environmental impacts that superwash yarns have, as well as the carbon footprint of most commercially made yarns traveling from South America, Australia, China and all over to get to my local craft store. This knowledge, paired with the gristly reality of dye houses and garment factories in Southeast Asia created a real conviction to change the way that I think about my wardrobe and my fiber pursuits, as well as a real love and passion for fibers that are not only beautiful and soft and strong, but are made locally and encourage a newly awakened fiber industry in the U.S. again. 

This month, my goals are less about making and more about being intentional about my current state and where I want to go. I am a big thrifter and lover of secondhand, and while wonderful, this has led me to a place in my wardrobe where I find myself looking into my closet and feeling like my style is all over the place. I would love to find some time to pare down, eliminate items I never wear and really think carefully about what I WANT to wear - and how to make that happen. Whether that be knitting, sewing, mending and altering, spinning yarn I want to knit with, or buying sustainably. I will likely also be knitting lots of bowties for my online shop and starting to knit Timberline for my husband's fall and winter wardrobe. 

So there you have it! If you have any goals or thoughts about Slow Fashion October I would love to hear them. October is already my favorite month and I'm so excited that this project is now a part of it!