Crochet Trials

After that skirt I made last, my finger which I used to pull the needle and roll the thread into a knot ended up in a couple of tiny calluses. So, I'm taking a break from stitching till I get a machine, or till it calls me strong enough to get back and decided to try crochet.

I've never been taught it, and it looks so pretty on blouses/shawls etc.. so I figured I'd teach myself with the help of lovely tutorials online.

Below is a few links one to a site and the other to youtube where I learnt the basic stitches.
http://www.knitsimplemag.com/node/23

http://www.youtube.com/show/artofcrochet/videos?view=7


And here is where I've managed to learn how to read a crochet chart, she explains it pretty well.
http://bynumber19.com/2011/10/01/tutorial-how-to-read-a-crochet-chart-diagram/
http://bynumber19.com/2011/10/03/tutorial-how-to-read-a-crochet-chart-worked-in-the-round/
My try isn't so neat, but I'm getting there.

My main trouble is with the tension of a stitch, used to have that problem when we learnt knitting in school, never quite got the hang of it and subsequently gave it up. Hoping I'll stick with this longer though :)

Anyone have any suggestions of nice sites/links where I can learn crochet online?

Hits and misses! - Peplum Skirt

I've finally got something new for you, did it a while back and was hoping to take better pictures. But I guess I'm too lazy. Oh well!

Another hand-stitched garment, that I fully intend on re-enforcing once I get a machine of my own.

Hits and misses? Well take a look at it for yourself. The skirt is a total hit, for me at least, the top though I had huge problems with - satin is SO fidgety!

Yes, this was what I was talking about - bad pictures.... hmmm

Anyways, some better close up pics of the skirt and top below, before I go on to explain how I did it.

So, Peplum is the in thing, and I'm totally loving it! I've seen quite a few of them and I was wondering, since I'm working by hand, and my inside seams are atrocious to look at, how would I go about hiding it? Then, I happened to see this black top with cream satin lining and loved the combo of a matte material against something shiny like satin.

Why did I change it to purple? I had on an impulse already bought the shoes without anything to match it with... what?? Tell me honestly if you haven't done that!! 

So first thing was I took a skirt that I already had and used it as a guidelines of sorts. I wanted extra length, so I added that.

And for the darts on the two panels of the skirt, I added an inch to each side, which I later took in to make the darts.

Now here was the trickiest part, figuring out the peplum part. Now as you can see from the above pic of me, the pattern isn't completely long to short from left to right. It has a wave which increases in length towards the end. The whole peplum is about two and half times a skirt width. I then cut up the satin in the same fashion, placed both right sides facing together and stitched it. Then turned it around to get the look you see above. 

I put the zip on the longer peplum side, and stitched along all the side seams. I made the waist band in the same fashion that I did for the Kanzashi skirt. Finally did the bottom hem.

Now, for the top, I wanted something easy, because I don't know how to fit the bust area. Anyone has a tutorial to teach me how?

So, I landed on this tutorial and followed it almost exactly. http://chewynoodles.blogspot.in/2011/08/draped-jersey-circle-top-tutorial.html

And like I said satin is fidgety, and as much as I tried, I couldn't make it sit properly, I gave up and gave it to a tailor, but I'm still not very happy with it. I'll probably end up making a new top for this skirt. 

On a side note, anyone know how to handle satin better? The tailor did picoting/bidding for the edges.. which looks nice and is a better finish than what I did, which was a rolled hem kind of thing.

But, that ended up pulling the threads of the satin, so its not really wearable anymore... thoughts?

I've also been told that the top looks plain, and I've been planning on making some satin flowers in the kanzashi style, if not for the top then I could always add it to a clip and clip it to my shoes.. something like this.. 

On a parting note, for anyone interested in how I did the flowers on my nails... so pretty right? Check out the various tutorials on youtube, its really simple... like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay99VIxzwmo

Till next time, take care and be happy :)