Slightly altered Lilou bodice

I'm a huge fan of the Lilou bodice so when I wanted to have a play around with altering a pattern that's where I decided to start! 

This is what the bodice usually looks like.... 

So here's the alterations i decided to make, first I decided to lower the back, like a lot! Into a deep V, to do this I quite simply drew a line from the shoulder until it met the back seam, (which I realise now, makes absolutely zero sense so here's a pretty picture) 

The piece on the right is the back piece, and the piece on the left is the altered front bodice piece where I decided to do a high neckline, for this I just drew a line from shoulder to the middle bit and hoped and prayed it would work okay. Which it did! 

Ah yes! There's a keyhole , that was a mad burst of imagination that I had when I was at the cutting out stage! And I'm so pleased with how it turned out! 

This is the lined bodice by the way (you may recognise the fabric as one of my first refashioning projects, I wasn't wearing the skirt so I repurposed it!) 

I'm considering adding this chain to make it a bit new interesting however I'm wondering if it might mess with my dryer! And the last thing I want is a broken dryer! 

And here's how the back is currently looking. 

Now there was a skirt , however my adorable idea, turned out to be less than adorable so I had to scratch it! 

I so have another idea for a skirt though so hopefully it will be ready to photograph soon!!!! 

Much love 

Frankie

Xxx

Another day another row

So summer has finally decided to arrive, and thank god! It's nice to give my winter wardrobe a break! And it's perfect timing as my jeans torn in the knee last week! So now I can wait till my birthday to replace them and just wear pretty summer dresses until then! 

Anyway here at knitwits HQ a few things have been happening although the nothing major.

•I've been working on custom orders,

•i've changed my books over for fresh ones , basically I own a LOT of books and we have zero space for them so me and Mr knitwits came up with a deal, all my reference books stay downstairs in a big box behind the chair, and my literature stays in our loft, then I have 20 or so books that I keep on a bookshelf in the bedroom and I rotate them when I get bored. 

At first I hated this system, but then I began to appreciate it, I realised I had got lazy with my reading and was just rereading the same books over and over! Now I'm forced to Broaden my horizons (plus it forced me to finish vanity fair!) 

• I've been playing around with the lilou bodice and am currently sewing up my changes (fingers crossed I finish it tonight) so I can blog it tomorrow, hopefully with some sort of brief tutorial on how to alter pattern pieces to create new necklines. 

• but currently im sat in our man room, whilst little knitwit slumbers in his bedroom after a hard day at nursery and Mr knitwit slumbers after a night shift. so I'm adding more rows to my English paper pieced quilt. 

 

I've got this whole EPP thing down to a fine art now, I have two bags that I cart around the house and they contain all my supplies! I even took them shopping last week on the off chance that little knitwit napped in the car, so I'd have something to do whilst he quietly snoozed! He didn't but it was nice to be prepared.

Technically there are other things I could be doing whilst my boys sleep, but I like to convince myself that ironing is very loud and I would want to risk waking them up! 

Much love

Frankie

Xxx

By the power of grayskull!

Okay so after feeling a bit meh about my projects in the waiting I decided to do something really fun and frivolous. So I made a He-man dress. 

I should probably explain that my He-man fabric came from little knitwits godfather (they were his childhood curtains) and they were in super! Good condition! 

Now I've been planning on toiling my lilou bodice again (from love at first stitch by Tilly walnes) mainly because I thought I could get away with a size smaller so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to do some testing and have fun. 

It went together fairly easily until I realised this had happened, that's a fully twisted strap folks! By the time I realised I had already attached the skirt to the front bodice and attached the lining, apart from at the bottom, so instead of undoing about five steps of hard work I just unpicked the should seam and pushed it through in a moment of sewing wizardry (I realise that makes about as much sense as the shell suit phenomenon, but there you go! If I screw up again I'll be sure to take pictures) and then top stitched the whole thing to neaten it up. 

Anyway I got it together in the end! 

I'm still having trouble with the shoulder straps, so I'm assuming I have some  sort of quirky shoulder thing going on! (Are you proud of me by the way? I managed to do a back view without bowing my head down!) 

Due to fabric shortage I couldn't really pattern match, which I don't really mind. It means I have skeletor rising out of my back! 

And I managed to keep anything huge from drawing people's eyes to my boobage area. 

I used all the fabric I had left for the skirt. I had roughly a square so I just halved it and then halved one of the halfs to make three panels (one front two back) for the skirt. It's pretty full because of all the gathering but I think it looks cute. 

I did end up with a gap at the top of my zip, so I added a button. Do you remember the first series of gbsb when they made the shell top and had to make a loop from thread? Well I made one of those! 

Mainly to prove to myself that if Patrick grant was stood over me, I'd be able to make one. And if he'd like me to prove it, I'd be quite happy to. 

Here's the print, we have skeltor. 

Not sure who this is? 

He-man himself, who wears smaller pants than I remember? 

But no she-ra sadly.... 

That's the inside of the bodice which I stitched by hand for added neatness! 

All in all I love it , and it's a far better fit! 

Much love

Frankie 

Xxx

Ooooo, fabricgasm

For anyone who doesn't know a fabricgasm is....... Actually I'm gonna let you figure it out for yourselves, it involves the word fabric and gasm so I think it's pretty self explanatory. 

Anyway, seen as I'm still rocking my no buying fabric till I've used fabric stuff, my fabricgasm a have been strictly the online kind (I sound full on creepy right now) so I thought I'd share some of my favourites! 

Somebody buy me this Liberty so I can make the worlds prettiest blouse! 

I have a weird relationship with birds, owls=yes, parrots/bugies=no. Pigeons I hate!!! Speaking of which are they getting braver or is it just me? When I was young a well placed clap and the little buggers would go flying, but I practically stood on one yesterday and it didn't even flinch! 

There's still a little freaky goth kid in me somewhere! 

I mean she's really trying to get out!

 

I can practically feel her sharp little black goth nails clawing on the inside of my head! 

Yeah I'm gonna have to let her out soon, please expect some Skeleton makes as soon as my fabric stash allows! 

I love the look and style of retro games, anything in 8 bit is right up my alley.

My sister calls me Frankenstein so this is pretty appropriate. 

My little pony - nuff said

And lastly I'm not sure who this is, but it would make the cutest summer dress! 

Anyway if you want to see more of my fabricgasms follow me on Pinterest! I update my fabricgasm board regularly, usually at 3am when I can't sleep! 

Suddenly just realised that most of my choices are Alexander Hebert which says a huge amount about how seriously awesome his designs are! (At least I'm assuming it's a he? And not just a team of "people"? I'm picturing a cool , friendly guy with round spectacles, a deep love for coffee and a wicked sense of humour, if I find out it's a group of university students working on iPads I might cry!) 

Much love 

Frankie

Xxx

P.s if someone could shed some light on the Alexander Henry thing that would be awesome! 

The evil bear of doooooooom!

A little while ago Mr knitwits nan gave me a bear kit that she hadn't got round to finishing. And when she offered it to me to use I jumped at the chance (mainly because it was highly probable that all the pieces were knitted and just needed sewing together , nans not a huge fan of sewing things together) 

I was very nearly right, I just had to knit 5 pieces , two paw pads, two leg pieces and a stupidly complicated looking body piece . 

Oh yeah I knit was of those! Surprisingly the instructions were pretty simple! 

Anyway here's are the decapitated pieces of bear. It was a brute to stitch together by the way.

Here's a wonky eyed bear face, with dainty nose (before I ruined it)

Here's what it's supposed to look like.....

All stuffed and well bloody huge! I was not expecting it to be this darn big! I had to make a couple of changes, for starters the arms are stitched together, it turns out that you can stitch them on upside down so they hang funny, and it also turns out that fluffy stitches in fluffy wool are dammed hard to unpick therefore a little bit of sticking magic made them look normal! 

I also changed the stitches around the hearts on the blanket and paws, the instructions called for big stitches but I didn't think they seemed very sturdy, so I opted for a simple running stitch! 

My nose also came out more pointy and triangly, and well not brilliant but not awful. 

The heart in the ear is a pretty cute feature though! 

And the feet are pretty cute!

But here's the honest truth! If I had brought/been brought this kit I would never have finished it! I'm not great at the whole finishing hard projects thing! So I am extremely thankful that nan lost her motivation and all I had to do was knit a few small pieces and stitch it up! 

That's what I call teamwork!

Much love

Frankie

Xxx

Diagonal stripe, rainbow, baby blanket

There's not really a lot I can say about this project to be honest, because I don't completely love it. 

But it's finished so I'm blogging it! I decided not to crochet or knit the border in the end, I knew that sinking precious time into this project would not make me like it anymore so instead I just threaded the edges (my increase and decrease holes) with a sparkly gold ribbon and finished with a big old bow! 

Hopefully the ribbon will help it to hold its shape. 

The patterns pretty basic , I started with two stitches and increased 1 stitch at the end of every row, when I was happy with the size I decreased. Simples! I knitted the whole thing in garter stick but I'm sure it would look nice in stocking stick aswell! In fact my next one might be in stocking stitch! 

I'm still not sure about the rainbow colour palette , but I'm not a very bright colourful person I tend to favour neautrals  . 

Close up of my sparkle bow!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it to be honest, I'm not sure I know anyone who's in the market for a rainbow baby blanket! Mr knit wit has kindly offered to drive me to a local hospital or dogs home if I want to donate it . Apparently dogs homes are always looking for blankets because their dogs get to take them home! It's definitely something I'm going to keep in mind when I'm clearing out the airing cupboard! 

In other news I'm still plugging away at my patchwork and I'm still participating in me made may, I've just given up on the whole taking pictures thing! Life got in the way so I might just run a me made week just for me when I'm less busy! Although I thought then I might just put all my me made clothes to one side so I have to wear different things! 

Much love

Frankie

Xxx

an odd sense of satisfaction.

I currently have a whole host of unfinished projects floating around my house, i have a vintage blouse cut and ready to go but am feeling meh about it, a knitted blanket that needs some sort of edging either knitted or crocheted but I'm debating if throwing myself back into crochet is really the way to go. I have a patchwork blanket, but I think this is going to be a long running project, and i have a decapitated bear, that I was given yesterday by Mr knitwits nan (but more on that tommorrow) .

And i also had my sweet peas that needed putting in the garden, which i was dreading. I tend to have a bad reputation with gardening, in fact mr knitwit takes great pleasure in reminding me of a time when i thought i could grow, pumpkins, courgettes, carrots, potatoes and squash all in a metre square plot of garden (in my defence i had just binge watched the goodlife and was on a felicity kendall high)! Naturally it did not work and since then ive kept my gardening habits on a slightly smaller scale.

and my sweet peas are included in this i brought the kit from home and bargains for under a pound and was pleasantly surprised when they actually grew! YES something i planted grew! And then came the unfortunate task of putting them into the garden! which required the quite hefty task of weeding and foofing the soil around and throwing rocks away (where do the rocks come from seriously?)

anyway heres how it looks now!

My lovely sweet peas tied to their canes in all their glory! (thanks again the nan for the canes!)

with my gardening gloves and makeshift trowel! turns out we dont have one but a wooden spoon works just aswell!

anyway im off to try and finish at least one more project today!

Much love

Frankie

xxx