lady skater lovin'

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last few years, you've likely heard of or made yourself a Kitschy Coo Lady Skater dress. I bought the pattern early on last year and I am utterly ashamed that it took me a whole year to sew as it has kick started a complete love affair with sewing jersey.

My absolute favourite thing about sewing with jersey is that it is so forgiving regarding fit. I have spent the past two or three years labouring over woven bodices and feeling increasingly frustrated with things not fitting comfortably. I love how this all disappears with jersey. "Got big, awkward shoulders? No problem, I'll stretch over that." THANK YOU, JERSEY!

 This is my triumphant "I am an unstoppable jersey dress making machine" pose.

For my first Lady Skater I chose a navy blue, medium weight jersey from Girl Charlee as I wanted to sew a replacement for an old shop bought dress which gradually shrunk to the point of looking indecent. This jersey is lovely and soft to wear and my only complaint is that it loves to pick up any bit of fluff or hair - but that's navy fabric for you I guess.

For this dress I cut a size 4 according to my high bust measurement. The only changes I made to the pattern were grading out to the width of size 5 for the armhole to account for my broad shoulders and lengthening the skirt by 3 inches as I'm tall(ish) at 5ft 7 1/2.

I usually need to lengthen bodices by at least 1/2 inch but I had read comments that the Lady Skater bodice is long so I didn't change it. If anything, it came out slightly too long on me(!) but not annoying enough to unpick. Essentially, this dress was a toile but I'm delighted with how it turned out and I have worn it loads. It turns out that a plain, navy dress was definitely missing from my wardrobe.

Spurred on by the success of the first dress I immediately set out on my second. Shock horror, I picked another plain fabric! This time I used a deep green jersey purchased from My Fabrics. It's feels a little bit lighter in weight to the first one and not quite as soft/cotton-y to touch, but still a nice jersey. Although I like the little cap sleeves on the navy dress I fancied something different so I copied the length of my Tilly and the Buttons Agnes t-shirt and twin needled the hems. My only other change was shortening the bodice by 1/4 inch.

 My "WOOH, this dress has longer sleeves" pose.

I'm really happy with how this dress turned out as well, although I probably wear the navy dress more.

Tidy insides.

For my third Lady Skater, I finally felt ready to cut into my "posh" fabric which I purchased from Kitschy Coo at the same time as the dress pattern. It's a medium weight jersey (organic cotton, I think) and feels gorgeous to handle and wear - really soft and weighty. It's worth paying a little bit more sometimes for quality fabric, especially if it has a ridiculously cool print. This fabric is covered in sewing paraphenalia - how cute is that?!

I had forgotten that I could only get hold of 1.3m of this fabric so I was worried there wouldn't be enough for a dress. Thankfully I *just* managed to squeak it out. YAY! This dress makes me so happy.

Actually, all three of my Lady Skater dresses make me ridiculously happy. I genuinely feel like I've turned a corner with my sewing. I'm producing clothes that I want to wear all the time, not some of the time, and are continually in the washing basket. I had it stuck in my head for so long that I wanted to wear woven cotton dresses when actually what I wear most, and love wearing, is jersey. I think I even enjoy sewing jersey more! There's a weird satisfaction in sewing a nice neckband or twin needling a hem.

I have since moved onto making Colette Patterns' Moneta Dress, another lovely jersey pattern, but I definitely see more Lady Skaters in my future. They hit that perfect balance of being incredibly comfortable yet flattering and potentially quite smart.

Apologies for the headless photography throughout this post. I'm not photogenic at the best of times, but I really didn't feel like having my face in shot when I took these photographs in the summer. I did daft poses to make up for it though!

knitted: turquoise blaster cardigan

It feels like an eternity has passed since I finished and photographed this project. May, I think? Anyway, I managed to finish knitting a wooly cardigan just before the start of summer. Smart, eh? I only wore it a couple of times before it got packed away with the winter jumpers. Oh well, not long now until it can come back out from the drawer!

(worn with my yet-to-be-blogged Kitschy Coo Lady Skater dress)

The pattern in question is yet another Andi Satterlund design, the Blaster cardigan. What can I say, I love Andi's cardigan patterns. I've knit 3 now and still have at least 2 more in my knitting queue. They just look so pretty with my fit and flare dresses. Like my previous two cardigans (here and here) I used Jamiesons of Shetland wool (again, what can I say, I love their wool) but this time in the colourway "Caspian". It's a really lovely dusky/dirty shade of turquoise.

Sadly this cardigan wasn't the most fun to knit, but I must stress this was entirely due to tension problems with my knitting, not a reflection on the pattern. My first gauge swatch was absolutely massive so I knit a second one on smaller needles with a tighter tension. It was still a teeny bit bigger than recommended but I calculated from the schematics that my tighter gauge would give me a good fit as I run between sizes with Andi's patterns.

It turns out that it's one thing altering your tension for a small project over a couple of evenings, but another entirely for a longer project. Sadly messing with my natural gauge resulted in irregular tension: it's slack at the beginning around the upper back then gets tighter towards the waist. Thankfully I'm broad shouldered with a small waist so weirdly the tension blunder works in my favour, but it irks me nonetheless. 

My second drama was the first sleeve. I had knitted down to the elbow when I tried the sleeve on and decided that it felt uncomfortably tight. I wasn't sure whether I was still having tension problems or my upper arms are disproportionately large - a bit of both I suspect - but I bit the bullet and frogged the sleeve back to the short rows at the sleeve cap. For my second attempt I knitted double the amount of rounds between the decreases and I'm much happier with the fit. I also knitted the sleeves to full length.

The third drama was the knitting of the buttonholes as I didn’t understand how to do them from the pattern's instructions (they were knitted differently to my previous cardigans.) Then when I figured out the method after watching a KnitPurlHunter video on YouTube (seriously, if you ever have knitting problems, check out her channel) I had to undo them all because my buttons were too large to fit the holes. Doh!

My final gripe is that the top buttonhole wants to bulge upwards. I don’t know whether that’s down to how I picked up the stitches on the buttonband or the fault of the ribbon I sewed onto the reverse to stabilise the buttonband (never done that before, it looks pretty!) I had to sew the top buttonhole vertically as the ribbon was too narrow to sew the hole horizontal to match the knitted hole - perhaps it has stretched the hole out? 

I'm aware I've spent the vast majority of this post complaining, but I genuinely like the finished cardigan and think it looks pretty despite my blunders. I love the simple lace pattern, especially the detail around the waist, and the fit is surprisingly lovely despite my tension woes. I imagine it will get as much wear as my two other Andi Satterlund cardigans.

I'm undecided which of Andi Satterlund's cardigan designs to knit next. Hetty and Anouk are already in my pattern library, although I'm also really tempted by Andi's newer design, Salal. I would need to order wool though (oh, the hardship!) if I want to make another cardigan and it would be a good idea to finish knitting my first pair of socks before I start anything else. I'm ready to turn the heel - exciting!

caramelised apple and cinnamon cake

How on earth are we in September already?! Crazy. Anyway, here's a cake I made for my sister-in-law's birthday back in April. It has an autumnal feel so I guess it's appropriate that I'm sharing it later in the year. Sis-in-law is a fan of cream cheese icing so I generally plan my cake choices for her around that. After a flick through my recipe books I felt most tempted by the apple pie cake in Edd Kimber's first baking book, "The Boy Who Bakes."

I've actually baked that cake before for my brother's birthday years ago, but it is a *huuuuge* cake and the sponges involve some time consuming elements. To make things quicker and easier for myself I baked a standard victoria sponge cake but added some warming spice.

For the cinnamon cream cheese icing and caramelised apple topping and filling I followed the original recipe but scaled down the quantities. The overall flavour was tasty although from what I remember I thought I was a little heavy handed with the cinnamon in the sponges. I also slightly overbaked them which was annoying, especially since I was baking for someone else, but sometimes these things happen. Luckily the incredibly tasty cinnamon cream cheese icing and juicy, spiced apples provided enough moisture to stop it feeling like a sad, dry cake.

On the subject of cake, is anyone else watching the new Great British Bake Off series since it moved to Channel 4? Although the programme hasn't particularly changed, the absence of Mary Berry makes me sad. I also find Sandy Toksvig intensely annoying. Thoughts?

Sticky apple and cinnamon cake
Recipe adapted from Apple Pie Cake in "The Boy Who Bakes" by Edd Kimber
(I think this is what I did...)

cinnamon sponges:
I used the classic method of weighing out my softened butter/margarine, caster sugar and self-raising flour to the same weight as my eggs (each, not their combined total weight, if that makes sense.) I used 3 large eggs for this recipe which weighed around 6oz (about 170g?)
1tsp ground cinnamon (perhaps use less though, I'd go for 1/2 tsp)

cinnamon cream cheese icing:
75g softened butter
175g icing sugar
125g cream cheese (full fat)
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon 

caramelised apples:
3 apples (I used Braeburn or Cox)
55g butter
55g light brown sugar
1/4 tsp ground ginger

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C/ Fan 160C. Grease two 18cm/7 inch round cake tins and line the bases with baking parchment. In a large bowl beat together the margarine and sugar for about 5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add the eggs to the mixture one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add a tablespoon of the flour with the last egg to prevent the mixture from splitting. Add the cinnamon and flour and mix everything together until fully combined.

Divide the mixture between the cake tins and bake on the middle shelf of the oven for approx. 30 minutes until well risen, golden and spring back when touched. Leave to cool in the tins for a few minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.

For the icing, beat the butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy, for about 5 minutes, then beat in the cream cheese, vanilla extract and cinnamon.

For the caramelised apples core, quarter and slice into wedges. Add to a pan with the butter, sugar and ginger. Put the pan on the hob over a medium heat and cook until the apples have softened and are coated in caramel. Drain the apples and leave to cool but keep the caramel juice. Pour the juice back into the pan and cook again over a medium heat until it has reduced and thickened slightly.

To serve, spread half of the icing on top of one sponge along with a layer of apples and half of the caramel juice. Pop the other sponge on top and repeat. Enjoy!