Dawn Apron by Lydia Naomi

When my husband went through his old denim work shirts a few years ago to throw away the ones that were the most worn out, I grabbed the ones he was going to toss into the trash and stuffed them into a bag for safekeeping.

"They might be worn out to you, but there is a lot of good fabric there," I said.

He just rolled his eyes, but he didn't object. 😂

Ever since that day, I have been planning to use these old shirts to sew an apron for myself.

However ... it took me a lot of years to finally get around to making it. Obviously. Ha!!

The Dawn Apron, pattern by Lydia Naomi

After we were able to spend time last year getting my craft room mostly set up, this year seemed like the right time for me to start diving into doing some projects that I had been putting off, like this apron.

I already had the fabric on hand, so the next step was to find a pattern to follow.

I've had a snap-front cobbler's-style apron for a long time that I like and would probably be an easy design to replicate. My mother-in-law was a big fan of this style of apron.

Examples of snap-front, cobbler-style aprons

But I also like the look of the Japanese-style cross-back aprons, so I decided that that was the type of pattern I wanted to make. 

I spent a lot of time digging around online for Japanese cross-back apron patterns. There's a surprising amount of variety to be found among patterns based on this basic shape. Then I came across this video by Canadian fashion designer Lydia Naomi for how to sew her Dawn Apron pattern.

Lydia's pattern had all the features I wanted in my Japanese cross-back apron: full length coverage in front, at least two pockets, and good coverage in the rear. Links to purchase her pattern are listed below the video on its YouTube page, or you can find them on her website, lydianaomi.com.

This was my first venture into the brave new world of 21st-century patterns being delivered electronically by PDF. Mind. Blown. (!!!) I did read some comments online where people were having trouble figuring out how to assemble all the pattern pieces after printing them out, but I didn't have any trouble. If you need some extra help, Lydia also has a video tutorial for how to work with the PDFs. Lydia's pattern pieces are numbered, and if you trim off all the page corners (as directed) and tape them together in numerical order, everything comes together very well.

Lots of trimmed-off corners and pattern pieces taped together in order

Pattern pieces all taped together and separated into cohesive parts

My next challenge was to deconstruct the old shirts to start piecing together the scraps to make new pieces large enough to cut out. I started by using one of the shirt fronts, with its button placket and chest pocket, as the top-front part of my apron.

Starting to reclaim denim from the old shirts, including one old shirtfront

This project gave me my first opportunity to use the overlocking stitch function of my Bernette B38, which is a standard sewing machine, not a serger. Because this apron is made out of denim, I wanted to avoid the heaviness of double-folded hems. Using the overlocking function, I could finish the raw edges of the fabric in a way that made folding it under unnecessary, similar to the way a serger does. 

Every time I needed to patch two pieces together, I would seam them using the overlocking stitch, then press the seam allowance to one side, and then topstitch the seam allowance to secure it to the panel. I think the extra, random topstitching looks cute with the denim material.

But then, as I was patching pieces together, suddenly I realized that I had accidentally sewed two pieces together with one right-side up and the other wrong-side up. Ooops!! Making a mistake like that means I'm tired, and it's time to close up shop for the day to go rest.

Right-side up on the left; wrong-side up on the right

The next time I got back to working on the apron, I ripped out the seam where the pieces were facing different ways, sewed them together the correct way, and then carried on.

Front panel pieces assembled and ready to cut out

 

Front panel folded and cut out, shown wrong-side up

Pockets cut out and edges overlocked

After that one mistake where I sewed the pieces together facing the wrong way, the rest of the project proceeded pretty smoothly.

I used parts of a total of three old shirts to patch together the pieces I needed for the apron. I even ended up with some "novelty" pockets on the back by using those parts of two other shirt fronts. 😊 I'm really pleased with how the apron turned out.

A little wrinkly after going through the laundry

A little wrinkly after going through the laundry

Shawlcowl Pullover 3.0 is live

I'm very excited to announce that the 10th anniversary updated version of my Shawlcowl Pullover pattern is now live! If you've already purchased the pattern, you should have received a message by email and/or in your Ravelry inbox with a link to the updated version 3.0.

Version 3.0 of the pattern includes instructions to make three beautiful but slightly different variations of the Shawlcowl Pullover, as well as the bonus instructions for how to add length to all of them, should you wish to do so. 

This is the Shawlcowl 3 knitted in Red Heart Super Saver Ombre in the True Blue colorway. It includes the added length, whose steps are explained in the version 3.0 pattern, and also a 2/4 picot bind off (links to picot bind-off instructions also in the pattern).

If you haven't tried my pattern yet, here's a button with a link to where you can purchase it, even if you don't have a Ravelry account:

Thanks so, SO MUCH for your support, everyone! 💜 Words are inadequate to express how grateful I am to each of you for all the beautiful Shawlcowl projects you've made and shared over the past 10 years, as well as all your messages with questions and/or words of encouragement. Here's to another 10 years of this fun pattern!

Celebrating 10 years of Shawlcowl Pullover

I first released my Shawlcowl Pullover pattern in April 2014, and in the years since then, I have had some requests to write up instructions for how to add length to the original pattern, and I will admit that this was something I had been thinking about doing even before anyone asked me about it.

Challenge accepted!

Although I totally overlooked (oops!!) the opportunity I had earlier this year to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the release of Shawlcowl Pullover, I decided that it’s never too late to release an updated version of the pattern that includes these bonus, optional instructions for how to add length to the design.

Version 3.0 of the pattern will include instructions to make three beautiful but slightly different variations of the Shawlcowl Pullover, as well as the bonus instructions for how to add length to all of them, should you wish to do so.

The updated pattern will be released soon on Ravelry. So if you already own a previously released version of the pattern, keep your eyes out for Version 3.0 to land in your pattern library. And if you haven't already purchased the pattern, head on over to Ravelry and grab your copy now — you'll also receive the Version 3.0 update in your pattern library as soon as it's available!

Thanks so, SO MUCH for your support, everyone! 💜 Words are inadequate to express how grateful I am to each of you for all the beautiful Shawlcowl projects you've made and shared over the past 10 years, as well as all your messages with questions and/or words of encouragement. Here's to another 10 years of this fun pattern!

Pink blanket for great-grandaughter

This is going to be a Christmas gift for my great-granddaughter Lilliana, who loooves pink! The blanket used less than 4 skeins, so I'm using the last part of the fourth skein to also make a matching pink Mini Dino for her. 💜 This is a great design to give as a gift to any young person because it's easy to crochet, and the infinite pathways contained in the blanket represent the infinite potential in every young person's life. I absolutely love that symbolism and message.

I followed the method shown in this video by Fiber Spider. Blanket is worked with 39 pattern rounds followed by 1 round of solid DC and then edged with a border of RSC (reverse single crochet, also known as crab stitch). So, essentially, 40 rounds plus the edging. Here's the link to my Ravelry project page, which has details about the yarn and hook I used.

I've made this design several times, and I like that the rounds begin/end at a corner, but I think if I ever make another one, I'm going to attempt to do it in turned rounds, where there is no obvious right side/wrong side.

Etsy vs. Ravelry

In creative circles, there is an ongoing debate about which online platform is best for selling patterns: Etsy or Ravelry. And more sites are regularly coming online to also try to grab a piece of the action, such as Ribblr, LoveCrafts, Ko-fi, and more. 

As a pattern designer, I have used both Etsy and Ravelry to sell patterns, so I can speak to this debate from the viewpoint of having used both. 

Etsy charges sellers a fee for their listings (and the listings expire and have to be renewed every X number of days, which means you pay the listing fee again) whether you sell anything or not. Ravelry doesn't charge listing fees, and your listings never expire; it only charges you a fee when you make a sale. Depending on your individual needs and goals, there are different advantages and disadvantages to each platform, so the answer of which platform is best is entirely dependent upon your particular situation. There is no one-size-fits-all best answer.

Neo and Scoop Mini-Dinos free pattern

Since the beginning of the year I have been in the middle of several large, long-term projects and felt like I needed to give myself a mental break and make something that works up super fast but also gives a finished product that is super satisfying. 

This Mini-Dino designed by Mary of the MerryMakes blog turned out to be just the project that my weary heart needed. He is SO STINKIN' CUTE!!! And he was really fast and easy to make. I wuv him!!! I also love that Mary has a video tutorial that walks us through every step of the creation process.

I made mine with a 5.5mm hook, which is a larger hook than the pattern specifies, but I tend to crochet tighter than the average bear anyhow, so I think it worked out fine. At the gauge I was working, my dino turned out to be about 6.5 inches tall. For comparison, Mary's Mini-Dinos work up to be about 5 inches tall when made with worsted weight yarn and a 4mm hook. I was also using the yarn-over single crochet technique rather than the more traditional yarn-under single crochet technique that a lot of amigurumi makers use. Mary also works her dinos using the yarn-over single crochet, but I've read that if you use the yarn-under single crochet, your finished item will be slightly shorter than if you used the yarn-over single crochet.

The pattern also specifies to use 6mm safety eyes, but I didn't have any safety eyes on hand, so I used two 10mm black buttons from this kit that I found on Amazon last year. It has black buttons in a bunch of different sizes, so they are useful for lots of various projects. So far I have used these buttons for eyes on a few recent amigurumis: my Zoey Zebra and also my Halloween Melly Teddy Ragdolls Gabby Ghost and Bobby Bat.

Just because he is soooo adorable, here's another picture of Neo posing on the coffee table with my Round Basket for Square Coasters. 😍

Neo turned out so cute that I decided he needed a friend, so I used a small scrap of Red Heart Super Saver in the Zebra colorway to make his friend Scoop. Scoop looks like newsprint from a newspaper, so that's how she got her name.

Peekaboo Sun Hat free pattern

I first attempted this pattern in 2020, right before my family decided to move cross-country, so this project got put away for a few years until things started to settle down again. But I never forgot about it because I think it's a great pattern. I wear my hair in a messy bun during the day at least 99% of the time, so I love hat patterns that are designed to accommodate my preferred hairstyle.

Messy bun hats for winter became all the rage a while back (which was great for me), and we saw many variations of beanie patterns designed that way, but there still aren't many summer/sun hats around that are made to work for long-haired people who want to both wear their hair up and also wear a hat for sun protection in summer.

This Peekaboo Sun Hat designed by Susanna Biaye is a very well designed, great solution to that dilemma. I love it.

In 2020, I initially started working the pattern using some leftover Red Heart yarn in my stash, but it didn't take long for me to realize that this heavy worsted acrylic fiber was not going to make a hat that would feel comfortable to wear in the summer heat. Then, as I said before, life got in the way, and this project got shelved.

First try in Red Heart acrylic

When I finally had time to think about trying this pattern again in April 2023, I had decided I wanted to make it using either some thin jute cord or else maybe a raffia paper ribbon.

I had most of a spool of this 2mm jute cord in my crafting stash (leftover from making tags for Christmas ornaments, etc.) and decided to see if I could use it to make the Peekaboo Sun Hat. (One 1,100-foot spool of the jute cord is amply more than enough to make one of these hats.)

The jute is very coarse, but it was surprisingly easy to crochet with using a 5.5mm hook. However, to make the hat more comfortable to wear, I plan to add an interior band (like a sweatband) cut from one of my husband's old T-shirts. I will also tack on a black grosgrain ribbon as a hatband on the exterior. It took me a few weeks after completing the crochet part of this project to finish sewing on the black band by hand.

Because I was working at a different gauge, I had to modify some of the stitch/row counts from the original pattern, but that wasn't too difficult.

The roughness of the jute fiber gives the hat a bit of a broken-in look like you'd see on a gently-worn old straw hat. I think this will be a great hat to wear while working in the garden or even while out hiking.

This is the first time I've ever added a wire to a hat brim for shaping. From the little I've read about the process, it seems that using a thin twisted cable type of galvanized flexible wire is better for hats than a single-ply wire. The thin wire cable is marketed under many descriptive key words; I found what appears to be a suitable product by searching for "picture hanging wire." Each hat brim needs about 50 inches of the wire (or about 1.4 yards), so you obviously don't need to buy a 100-foot roll of the stuff unless you're planning to mass-produce a lot of crocheted sun hats. 

The trickiest part for me, since I'm new to adding wire to hats, was figuring out which gauge of wire would be heavy/strong enough to hold the brim in shape without being too heavy or too thin. Again, from the bit of reading I've done of what other yarncrafters have written about adding wire to hat brims, is that a wire gauge of somewhere between 16 gauge (about 1.6mm or 1/8th-inch thick) to 20 gauge (about 0.9mm or 1/16th-inch thick) is the ideal.

After a lot of clicking around, I found this blog post and pattern for the free Fedora Crochet Sun Hat by Jess Coppom of Make and Do Crew; she suggested this 1/16 in. x 50 ft. Galvanized Steel Uncoated Wire Rope from Home Depot, and I decided to use that wire for my hat brim.

If you look at my photo where I'm in the process of adding the wire to the brim, you'll see how the part of the brim with the wire is lying flat, whereas the part of the brim without the wire is lying crumpled and shapeless. It's fun to see how the simple addition of the wire is a game-changer for shaping the wide brim of the sun hat.

The brim on my hat is about 3.5 inches deep with 144 stitches around. I used a 6.5mm hook for working the last round with the wire added.

Adult Crochet V-Neck Vest

I'm making this in size 48 men's, but because I'm using a lighter-weight fiber than the pattern calls for (and because I crochet tightly), my gauge is 101 stitches for 24 inches across (which aligns with the stitch count for the largest size on the pattern, so I'll basically follow the stitch count instructions for that size).

Working the panels from the bottom up, one skein of the Bernat Softee Baby yarn went for about 14 inches, measured from the bottom edge of the ribbing. 

This design mainly uses the crochet lemon-peel stitch for the body of the vest, which gives a nice, pebbly-textured, reversible fabric that doesn't scream "I was crocheted." And although the fabric doesn't look holey, it does have quite a lot of small holes that lend breathability to it. (See my photo below with the sunshine showing through the vest panel.) This is a nice stitch for a masculine/unisex garment because it is comfortably ventilated while not looking "lacey."

I originally had wanted to knit a textured top-down V-neck pullover vest in a 3-weight yarn as an alternative to the cardigan-style vest that I knitted for my husband as a gift at Christmas 2021. After looking through a lot of patterns, I finally settled on the Ink (paid) pattern by Fiona Hamilton-MacLaren, which, as its description says, is a "cosy fitted vest with an all over texture pattern. The ribbed stitch pattern pulls the fabric in, but gives loads of stretch."

It's a beautiful design, and I really, really wanted to be able to make it. But the problem I was encountering is that it's not a pattern that I could put down and then easily pick back up again a few days later, even when I used a row counter and kept careful notes about where I left off. I was imploding my brain trying to keep track of where in the stitch pattern I needed to start each row, and spent a lot of time tinking (unknitting) rows where I started out wrong but it took me a full row or two to realize that my stitches had gone amiss. I was frustrated but also really sad at how difficult it was for me. I'm not saying Ink is a difficult design; the stitches are easy, mostly just knits and purls, and it's the way those basic stitches fit together that creates the beautiful, ribbed texture. I believe the problem rests with me and my inability to wrap my head around how it all fits together after putting the project down for a few days. I think I just need to attempt Ink again at a time when I can devote more uninterrupted concentration to it.

So after admitting defeat (albeit temporarily) with Ink, I started looking to see if I could find a top-down crocheted men's vest pattern with nice texture and a traditional fit. It wasn't until I altered my search criteria to accept bottom-up patterns that I found this Adult Crochet V-Neck Vest free pattern by Yarnspirations Design Studio. I usually prefer to make top-down garments, but the overall look of this vest fits with what I wanted to make, so I decided to give the bottom-up design a go. 

The downside of the lemon-peel stitch, compared to other, taller crochet stitches, is that it grows slowly, which can feel tedious (particularly when you're working from the bottom up). But if you just keep plugging along, the vest eventually will come together.

This is going to be a gift for my husband, as I said (probably for Christmas 2023), and if you've been reading my blog for a while, you already know that he strongly discourages me from making anything for him. He grumped vociferously when I asked him to stand up so I could measure the bottom ribbing at his waist when I started working the first piece for this vest. But sometimes my creative impulses just compel me to make him something. And I do believe that this has turned out to be a very nice vest for him that will fit comfortably and be nice and cozy. After Christmas, I'll add a photo of him wearing it to this post.

Edited to add: Here's the photo of him wearing it! It fits him perfectly. 😊

Instead of following the pattern instructions for the neck edging, I decided to try working 1 round in DC (including the decrease at the bottom front) followed by 2 rounds of alternating FPDC/BPDC to give the appearance of ribbing. That technique often works well for that effect, but I didn't like how it ended up looking here. So I ripped out that neck edging and redid it using the same technique that was used for the armhole edging.

I worked the armhole edging almost as described in the pattern, except instead of making the ribbing and then sewing it on, I worked the ribbing joining it to the armhole as I went using the join-as-you-go technique similar to what is shown in this video. 

To do that for the neck opening means the ribbing will begin/end at the bottom front. The ends will be "square" (not tapered) and will be sewn together overlapping, which is a common feature of knitted neck ribbing seen on some V-neck sweaters.

Iced Gingerbread Russian brioche messy bun hat

I have made this hat pattern a couple times before (here and here) and really enjoy it. It isn't exactly standard brioche; the technique is easier than brioche but still results in a beautiful, squishy, reversible, two-color project, so I love it.

The color scheme I've chosen here reminds me of iced gingerbread, so that's what I'm calling this hat. 😊

The biggest difference this time is that I stopped decreasing after the 48-stitch section to leave the top of the crown open as a messy bun/ponytail style hat. I used a 5mm crochet hook to cast off the knitted stitches into a round of 48 SC, and then worked one more round of SC with a few decreases to get the final stitch count down to 40 stitches.

The language of the video is Russian, but it's easy to follow along with the designer, Katerina Mushyn, as she knits in the video, so even if you don't speak Russian, don't be afraid to try this pattern. She also provides written instructions in both Russian and English in the video and on her website.

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/iPabTSvzu04
Written pattern: http://prjaga.com/vyazanie-dlya-zhenshchin/shapka-beret/komplekt-bordo-shapka-i-snud-spicami

It's also helpful to use a row counter that has main/subcounter functionality with this project. I used this free browser-based Row Counter App.

 

A demogorgon for Wendy

I am really pleased with how well this Stranger Things Demogorgon free pattern by Andrea Leek turned out. My grandniece Wendy is a huge fan of "Stranger Things," so this will be her birthday present. 

I decided to make the demogorgon in a slightly less demonic chibi ragdoll style. I worked the pattern as written for the legs and arms but subtracted two rows from the torso to shorten it slightly. I worked the head separately so it could be stuffed and closed and then stitched to the top of the unstuffed torso. Legs and arms are also unstuffed.

The toes, fingers, and "flower" face are worked as written in the pattern. Don't worry if the flower seems too full and wants to curl as you make it; it will straighten out as you stitch it to the head. I added more teeth to this one than was shown in the pattern to resemble the original character more closely.

I worked on this back in July and August, so my only problem was having to wait so long for December to get here so I could gift this little guy to Wendy! 

Even though my yarncraft productivity has fallen dramatically in recent years due to my chronic pain issues, it felt great to be able to finish this project. And now I bet Wendy's sister Charlotte will want me to make one for her too! 💜