Saturday, June 1, 2013

Gettin' Going

Barbara, I think I fixed the setting that lets anyone comment.

Well, accomplishments! I finished the mock up of my very first doll sweater design! Yay! Unfortunately, you cannot see it. I tweaked the design the whole time I worked on it, and, well, it just doesn't look that great. You can see the next one.

Which comes to the pattern! I bought knitting charting software! It's called Intwined. I really like it. I am charting my sweater so I can work from a nice pattern on the next one, instead of the pencil and graph paper I started out with. And all the eraser and pencil marks all over it.

And then the yarn! I used my tuition refund (because I dropped all my classes) to finally buy some wool dyes! My next sweater will be with yarn I've dyed!

So far I've only written instructions for the undergarment. It's a very complicated garment, but still, it's just one pattern and it's the underwear. I'm going to use a variation for the dress for the sweater pattern. The sweater will come with a dress with variations. I want to show three color ways and variations. Hopefully with a lot of embroidery. It will also include shoes and a headband.

I can't continue exactly right now with the dress pattern because I need some more dyed fabric. Which means I need to cut up my bolt of fabric and get it ready for dyeing. Next week I'll dye my yarn. Maybe by July 1st I can open my shop. I will have only one pattern available, at least six colors of dyed fabric, and maybe five colors of dyed yarn. I will need to buy more yarn before then, but I will wait to see if I can by successful dyeing yarn before I get more. I will be preparing "mini skeins" of 200 yards/40 grams. The sweater uses 175 yards/30 grams. There is quite a bit left over in comparison to what I'm making, so I think 200 is a good size.

This is all very exciting! So I will get busy cutting fabric and then work on my sweater chart!

7 comments:

  1. The dyed fabric and mini skeins sound like a really good idea. Are they going on Etsy?

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    1. Meant to reply to you. I still don't have the hand of blog spot. And my iPad still hates it.

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    2. I think a shop that sells nice things for dollmakers, and doll tailors is a good idea. A lot of people on Etsy make craft things already. They don't want to buy crafts, they want to buy craft making things.

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  2. Yes! I will revive my etsy shop! I need to make a banner for it--just add it to the endless list of things to do.

    I washed all my fabric today and folded it up. My goal is to start each day with a dyeing project, hopefully fabric and yarn at the same time. I'm waiting for a salad spinner to complete my yarn dyeing requirements, maybe it will be here tomorrow. So sad that I can't dye Friday morning, but I can do it in the afternoon. I think I will start with blue and blue.

    I'm not going to do variations on the pattern. I'm going to save my ideas for other patterns. And I may just show one colorway

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  3. Replies
    1. Thank you, Diane! Remember this post is a year old, though. I haven't published any patterns and don't really plan to now. I'm going to start a knitting masters course at the end of the month.

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  4. The computerized graph sounds very handy!

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