Heather
Heather is a Canadian with a passion for making things, and a desire to share those things with the world. (Whether the world wants her to or not.) Main mediums include knitting, sewing, polymer clay sculpture, baking, cooking, sketching, and probably things she hasn't tried yet.
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A Treasure Trove
Every so often I’ll see a tip on social media that is worth the hours I’ve wasted to scrolling. Today I learned that if you google “the magazine rack” it will take you to a section of the Internet Archive (or Wayback machine) that has tons of old magazines available for viewing. Including those pertaining to machine knitting! Here is a link to that search specifically: https://archive.org/details/magazine_rack?tab=collection&query=machine+knitting&page=2 You can find some of these on other sites, but this is a really nice layout and it’s got a lot that I haven’t seen before. My favourite part of these old magazines is the ads. I can’t imagine a time when you…
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Elf Sweaters – Free Pattern!
I thought for sure I had posted about this pattern before, but it looks like I may not have. Even if I have, it’s been years since I first put it up, and I’ve given the document a fresh branding makeover for 2025 so I’ll post it again. If you are someone who likes to dress up your visiting house elf, ’tis the season for knitting some tiny sweaters. I know there are tons of patterns for hand knitted elf sweaters out there, but this one is “designed” (I use the term loosely here!) for a standard gauge 4.5mm (or 5mm) knitting machine with ribber. It’s four rectangles, so if…
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Making Motivation
This post is going to be a bit of a departure, but I keep thinking about this subject so I’m going to try to put some coherent thoughts down about it. People can be weird when you tell them you have “domestic” hobbies, particularly those that veer into the tradwife, women’s traditional work sphere. A few years ago (pre-covid) typically if I told someone I sewed or knit things, I would get one of two responses: “Oh that’s so nice, you must save SO much money!” or “I wish I had the time!” To be clear saving money was never my main motivation for making things. Anyone who does any…
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Udemy Pattern Drafting Class Review & Drafting Discussion
Like most of you probably do, I get a lot of ads on social media for Udemy, Domestika, Craftsy, etc. I finally got an offer I couldn’t refuse, an introductory pattern drafting class for $17 or so. So I signed up, only to discover it was only an hour of content, and largely an ad for the instructor’s YouTube channel and website. But, it did have a couple of useful tips, I suppose. So I completed the hour and got a certificate, hooray for me: I did like the instructor’s style very much, and have since subscribed to his YouTube channel, but I won’t be in a hurry to pay…
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Making Track Pants from Existing Track Pants (aka “Pervert Egg” Pants)
If you’ve ever had a perfect pair of track pants, you know why you never want to let them go. They fit comfortably in both waist and length. They aren’t tight in the wrong places. They make your butt look nice – as nice as it can look in track pants anyway. Also as an aside some people might call these types of pants sweat pants, or jogging pants, but I’ve always called them track pants. For me the perfect pair were a grey pair of Beaver Canoe track pants that I bought at Target Canada circa…sometime between 2013 and 2015. And up until recently I was still wearing them.…
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Lutterloh Knitting
It’s been some time since I sewed the dress in my last post, and in the interim I’ve made another Lutterloh pattern. I had said I wanted to draw out the tank top pattern on my knitleader and knit it on the Brother 940, and I did just that. I went with this simple number: I drew out the pattern on paper manually, using the Lutterloh ruler, and then cut it out and traced it onto the knitleader mylar sheets. I included the dart, even though in retrospect I probably didn’t need to. I chose a yarn and a stitch pattern (a very hard task for me). I wanted to…
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More Lutterloh Patterns
I thought before I dive into Lutterloh pants making, I should try something a little simpler. Enter this dress: It’s a basic little number with a back zipper and a couple of darts. I have a similar RTW dress so I can compare construction techniques. A better place to start for a pattern system with no instructions, I think. And a little more forgiving if the sizing is not quite right. First off, the pattern doesn’t indicate facings for the armholes. It only really shows a little fold over area at the back neck. It is assumed that the armholes would therefore be turned under, but I thought that a…
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Sewing a Lutterloh Pattern
As most buyers/collectors of pre-loved knitting or sewing machines know, often when you get a machine you are given a collection of assorted odds and ends along with it. Pieces for other machines, random thread, bobbins, old elastic – anything that may have been associated with the machine in question. With one of my acquisitions, I can’t remember which at this point, I was given this box: At the time I had no idea what it was, but at some point I opened it and figured out it is a pattern drafting system made by Lutterloh. I put it aside, and hadn’t looked at it much until recently when I…
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Tubular Fair Isle/Pattern Knitting on the Superba
A few times someone has brought up the possibility of machines that can knit tubular fair isle, but I actually don’t know of any machine that does it automatically. Maybe a passap? I don’t know. But after my three-colour jacquard investigations using a “blank” pass, I had wondered if it would be possible to do the same type of thing on the Superba, but in the round, so you’d have a tube instead of a double-bed jacquard fabric. So I finally got around to trying it out. Am I the first person to do this on the Superba? I very much doubt it, but I couldn’t find any documentation about…
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Pattern Drafting (for Sewing) with Seamly2D
Why hello! I think the title for today says it all – I want to talk about drafting your own sewing patterns. If, like me, you got your start in sewing garments from commercial, pre-printed patterns from the “Big Three” pattern companies, or the printable PDF patterns available online, it has maybe never crossed your mind to draft your own patterns. After all, there are tons of great commercial patterns available, many of which include tutorials and helpful tips to make sewing your own clothes possible, even for beginners. Especially if you’re sewing for just one person (particularly someone who doesn’t change sizes frequently) and can get used to what…