Craft Archives - Page 14 of 77 - Violet LeBeaux

Puffy Plaited Knitted Headband Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 4, 2014 | Craft, Hair-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

Yay! More knitting tutorials! I have so much of this yarn left over from my cable knit sweater that I just can’t help but knit XD

Today we’re making a knitted headband which is puffy and plaited.

To begin I cast on 24 stitches and knit 2 rows in stockinette.

The I put the first 16 stitches into another needle to work with later. I worked this in 3 sections of 8 stitches each.

Ignoring the other 16 stitches I knit the section of 8 in stockinette until it was long enough to wrap around my head without stretching it.

After the first 8 stitches it should look something like this:

I put those 8 stitches aside and then began to work the next 8.

And then the final 8 after that.

The point of that is that you need to have 3 strands of equal length to plait. Once I plaited them together I put all of the stitches back on the needles and knitted another 2 rows to finish it off.

To join them, I stitched the ends together and it looks quite seamless! 5 points to whoever can correctly guess where the seam is…

Looking good!

I love this more than regular headbands because it’s so squishy and comfortable to wear.

What do you guys think? Cute? I wonder what else I could make using this technique!

Basic Men’s Ribbed Beanie Pattern

by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 2, 2014 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

James asked me to make him a new beanie a while ago because all of his current beanies look like this…

He seems to think no one notices when he wears them inside out… but I do.

So anyway this project was actually quite a quick one to do because it’s so basic. James doesn’t like fancy designs so even though I wanted to do some cool cabling he ended up with plain old ribbing.

Obviously this will vary with head size etc so doing a test swatch is important etc. For James’ head size I cast on 100 stitches. For this kind of ribbing, really you just want double the number you would need for straight stockinette.

Then knit 2, purl 2 until you’ve got around 15cm of ribbing. I used circular needles because it was easiest for this size.

This was the amount of ribbing I did, it ended up being around 20 rows.

At the end of the ribbing, switch to stockinette and k2tog every third stitch to decrease it into being more head shaped.

Knit straight up until you reach the top of the head and then begin decreasing every 5th stitch again. At this point I moved over onto double pointed needles . I pretty much just continued decreasing like that until the end to create a fairly steep curve shape.

Tie off the top and it’s officially a hat!

Here you can see the decreases a little better.

James seemed happy enough with it and it’s certainly an improvement over his old ones so I might have to churn out a couple more… next time with cabling though XD

Bonus: this is what James thinks hat modelling is. I have no words.

Bergamot Bunny Needle Felt Patch

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 31, 2014 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

After the amount of fun we had with the VLB needle felt patch I thought it would only be fair to do a Bergamot Bunny version too!

You’ll need needle felting supplies and some white felt as well for this one.

Cut the shapes below out of felt.

Felt the round head to the body.

And the ears to the head.

Next smoosh up some white wool to cover the felt.

Begin with the ears…

And then cover up the rest in white as well.

Now for the details! In pink make her fluffy tail.

As well as the blush on her cheeks, hearts in her ears and little hands.

In this version I gave her a pink mouth and nose and a light purple “V” in her foot. I also made a little pink bow separately and added it on.

Then some big beautiful black eyes…

And so they look more like eyes and less like disturbing portals to the underworld, add in some white sparks and eyelashes.

Yay done!

Then you just need to pop a pin on the back and wear your new friend out and about!

She makes a great pin or patch to use on a bag or anything else!

How To Sew A Basic Stretch Lace Skirt – Sew Fun!

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 28, 2014 | Craft, Sewing 101, Tutorial

Yay sewing tutorial! Today is part two of a shirt and skirt set remake! I’m classing this as being part of the Sew Fun series but keep in mind it’s not so much for complete beginners, it’s more intermediate so I’m going to be skipping some basic steps along the way. There will hopefully be more beginners tutorials as soon as I have time to sew.

A few weeks ago I bought a skirt and shirt from Supre and I really liked the comfy stretchy lace they were made from. It’s perfect for summer and also super comfortable to wear. It’s a crazy easy pattern and I had managed to find some lace fabric on sale so I decided to make a couple of others so I could mix and match them together.

Here’s the finished set!

So last time we made the shirt, this time it’s the skirt!

I changed the skirt design to be even more simple than the original version by removing the zip. The lace and cotton that I bought was far more stretchy and a little more structured than the original so I decided to just not bother using a zip and instead rely solely on the stretch. Also… I didn’t have any zips left in my sewing cabinet and I couldn’t be bothered walking to Lincraft >_>

So the process was very similar to the shirt, I laid out the fabric and cut out the pieces leaving a 1cm seam allowance.

The skirt is made from identical front and back sections and two waist pieces. It’s not quite enough fabric to made it a circle skirt and it drapes much more nicely when the fabric is cut on the bias.

The same pieces need to be cut from the lining as well.

The first thing to do with the actual sewing is to overlock the waist pieces to the skirt sections. Do this with both the actual fabric and the lining.

Next overlock the front and back together down each side so it becomes a complete skirt shape. Do this with both the lining and the lace.

Then place the lining inside the lace with the good sides facing each other and overlock around the top of the waist.

So basically you should have an inside out skirt now.

Flip it the right way out and hem the bottom of both the lace and the lining.

You should also top stitch the waist band to give it more structure and a nice finish around the top.

Done!

Perfect! I love this skirt, it’s so swishy and fun to wear!

Perfect for dancing with my pretty assistant!

How fun! This was a really great project set so I can’t wait to do more sewing soon!

How To Sew A Basic Stretch Lace Shirt – Sew Fun!

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 26, 2014 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Sewing 101, Tutorial

Yay sewing tutorial! Today is part one of a shirt and skirt set remake! I’m classing this as being part of the Sew Fun series but keep in mind it’s not so much for complete beginners, it’s more intermediate so I’m going to be skipping some basic steps along the way. There will hopefully be more beginners tutorials as soon as I have time to sew.

The shirt is a very simple shift design. It relies completely on stretch to fit and has a stretch cotton for lining as well.

For this I am using purple stretch lace and pink stretch cotton for the lining. Keep in mind that I can’t advise you how much fabric you will need because it will depend on your size. I used less than 1m of each fabric for both the skirt and shirt if that gives an indication.

To get the pattern I laid out the old shirt and cut around it leaving 1cm for seam allowances. It is made up of a front piece, back piece and two sleeves. You can make one of these yourself by using the same basic shapes as I’m cutting out but fitted to your measurements.

Lottie was extremely helpful as per usual by napping on my fabric.

This is the front piece shape in both the main fabric and lining, note the large scoop neckline.

The back piece is the same with a much smaller curve for the neckline.

The sleeve pieces don’t require lining and the are standard cap sleeves.

As this is stretch lace I’m not bothering to top stitch most of the seams, just overlocking and sewing where it’s actually needed.

So to begin with I placed the front panel and it’s lining with the good sides together and overlocked the scoop neck. I did the same with the back pieces.

I folded them right way out again and you can see it creates a nice neckline seam.

Next, I overlocked the front and back pieces (and their linings) together at the shoulder seam.

I then opened it out again and pinned the cap sleeve along the seam. Sleeves can be a pain in the arse to sew straight so I always advise to do them as soon into the pattern as possible so you don’t find yourself trying to sew in tight spaces later.

I overlocked the sleeves on. Opened out flat you can see how it attached to the front and back section below.

This is what it looked like folded up the right way at this point.

I turned the whole thing inside out, overlocked the edges of the sleeves to avoid future fraying and then overlocked the shirt down the sides so it was sealed together into an actual shirt shape.

Then it was just a matter of tidying up. I added a hem to the bottom of the shirt.

And one to the edges of the sleeves. I also top stitched the neckline in place because it looked nicer.

Done!

This took me around half an hour to do including the cutting in the beginning so it really is a nice and easy pattern and if I ever have time I might churn out a heap of them in different colours because they are SO comfortable!

Looking good together!

And it looks good on too! In the next post I’ll show you how I did the matching skirt as well!

Lottie approves!

Warm Cable Knit Hot Water Bottle Pattern

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 24, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Another cable knitting project today! I don’t know if it’s quite weather appropriate but it was definitely time for a new hot water bottle cover, the old one I made was totally past it’s used by date!

This is another cable knitting project but with fairly simple cables. I used 4mm needles with 8ply yarn

This was my original sketch for the idea…

Cast on 108 stitches.

Then follow this row pattern:

k3 p2 k2 p2, 2 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k2 p2, 4 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k2 p2, 2 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k6 p2 k2 p2, 2 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k2 p2, 4 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k2 p2, 2 strand cable with 2 stitches per cable, p2 k2 p2 k3.

It looks really complicated when it’s all written like that but when you get in the rhythm, it’s quite easy because the second half is just a mirror image of the first half.