Inspinration: Dadirri Cardigan and Nore hack

First things first, happy new year! I hope that all the good things from last year will continue and that the bad ones will quickly only be memories. I usually do not make resolutions, but this year I have at least one. My life became very busy the last months and especially in December, I simply did not have time to blog. For this year, I will continue taking up less sewing deadlines (tests and tours) such that I have more time to freestyle. My blogging and sewing relaxes me, and I will go back to regular weekly blogging. I have several backlogged projects and today I am starting with a special one. Today, I am showing you my first clothing piece within years created from yarn, the Dadirri cardigan* from Compagnie M.

When I started this blog, sewing was not my main hobby. I had sewn a few things, but I mostly crafted with yarn. Knitting and crochet were the two things that kept me busy. Since I discovered sewing with knits (already four and a half year ago), those yarn related crafts just seemed to take so much time. But there is a huge advantage of yarn crafts, you can do them wherever you are. You can take them with you or just do them in front of the tv. Sometimes I feel like "doing nothing"in the evening and just want to watch tv, and then crocheting or knitting is perfect. Therefore, I usually have a yarn project laying around (which often do not reach the blog when finished). Through the years I have made a few blankets and toys, but not clothing.

I have often sewed with Compagnie M* patterns, I love the unique twist that Marte has in all her patterns. When I heard that she was going into knitting patterns, I was intrigued. The thing that make the Compganie M knitting patterns stand out, is that you are free to choose your own yarn and needles. For every pattern there is a special calculator that creates a pattern based on your personal gauge. You make a test square per stitch type and than you sit back and just follow schedule especially created for you.

The Dadirri *cardigan front is knitted in a coin stitch, and has regular knitted sleeves and back. The yarn that I used is recommended for needle size 4-5 (I knit rather loose, so I knitted it on 3.5). You can make the front dots very obvious by using a contrasting color, but I went for a rather subtle gray. On my version, the shoulders became a bit too wide. In the test pattern (the one I used) the shoulders were wider than in the final and I had even widened the front a bit because I knew my daughter would wear it over long sleeves. I am not bothered my the slightly wide shoulders, but in case you were, than it is important to know that this should not happen in your version.

I am a craft material horder and besides a big fabric pile, I also own quite some yarn. I am a big fan of cotton, and I bought this lovely blue yarn with the plan to once knit a cardigan. In blog and Instagram land I often envious look at all the perfectly matching knitted projects, so I always have plans. I also have the yarn in red, in that color I even once started a cardigan, but after knitting the back and a sleeve the project stagnated for a year, and I pulled it all out. I turned the pulled out yarn into this squirrel.

The biggest challenge with knitted cardigans is probably finding the perfect button. I almost never use buttons on my sewing projects am very loving the kam snap option and so do my kids. I have a very small collection of buttons and almost all buttons are tiny. I therefore decided to try making my own buttons from Fimo clay (which I also just happen to have in my craft collection). I had no clue how much clay I would need, so in the end I ended up with about 20 buttons...

For the shoot I decided to sew a dress and I hacked the Nore for kids* into to be like option B in the Nore for women. I only had half a meter from the blue tree fabric, because I bought it so long ago (I started out with buying half a meter pieces, but now I buy at least a meter). My eldest really liked the fabric, so I squeezed a dress out of it. I had to make an extra seam in the skirt. I even had to put the trees diagonal there (due to not having enough fabric), but I still feel it either looks intentional or does not show.