Noile dot Net

Nadine, the original designer of this garment calls it a capuche-écharpe, or “hooded scarf”.  But it’s a whole lot more than that:    It’s a hoodie (of a kind!);  a scarf;  a vest; a shawl; and maybe a bunch of other things, too.

(Links to her site and the pattern are in the text below, and also at the very end of this post.  Scroll all the way to the end if this post gets too wordy for you.)  I love wearing it with jeans,  a wool sweater and/or a down vest.

Here  it is with the ends tossed over the shoulders like a scarf:

Here is the “vest” version:

and the shawl version (sort of):

(I hate that belt buckle.  I’m looking at you, Orvis.  Why can’t a girl get a decent jeans belt with a small, black buckle?)

Here’s how the hood looks in back:

It can be worn as a poncho-like garment (mine is too wide to look good this way; Nadine’s pattern is better):

And here it is, on my dummy, in sort of a half-vest wrap (before embellishment):

Mine is made in black no-wale corduroy, lined with a black and white botanic micro-fleece bought at Field’s Fabrics a few years ago.  The button tabs are red no-wale corduroy (only three made the picture; not sure what’s up with that):

There’s a seam down the center back of the hood, with three tabs and three over-sized buttons closing the hood.  Another tab and over-sized button close under the chin.

I think the large buttons on the corduroy are one-and-one-quarter inches:

Because I wanted to anchor the buttons well, and didn’t want thread showing through on the fleece side, I used small red buttons as anchors underneath the large ones on the “front”:

At first, I skipped the decoration on the corduroy side, but the wide black ends just needed something more.  I’m not sure that what I added is the “more” required, but hey, I’m an engineering sort, not a creative sort.  Gotta work with what you have.

The end result of the embellishment wasn’t where I thought I was going, but I like the result anyway.  Kenneth King, who is the undisputed king of embellishment, would never have stopped here, but I am a simple cotton-and-wool kind of girl, so this was fine with me.

The tassels are drapery tassels bought at JoAnn’s.  They fell apart the first day I wore the hood (at JoAnn’s, no less, where I was shopping for more tassels!)

See what’s missing?  It’s the thread that wraps around the “neck” and keeps the tassel in one piece.

You might say “duh!  those are home dec, not apparel”, and you’d be a little correct, maybe, except how do you think these would fare on your table runner?  The curtain you open and close?  Your pillows?  Not well, my friends, not well.

However, the fix was easy, if annoying.  I just hand-stitched through the tassels just below the knobs, wrapped matching thread around the top of the tassel over and over and secured it so that each one looked exactly as it did before they came apart.

The tassels are not supposed to be washable, but my guess is that they will wash fine, but will fuzz up like dust bunnies once they hit the water.  That could be all right; I’ve got a spare one I’ll be testing.  The tassels allegedly dry clean, so they’d probably work well on any garment that requires that kind of care.

The inspiration for this piece came from the wonderful French blog Mes petites mains . . .  pleines de doigts, which you can read in English via this link.  (You can also get to the translated version anytime from my Links list on the right of this page.)  Author Nadine has  a tutorial and pattern right here.  If you don’t read French, open a Google Translate page, and copy and paste the URL into the page; voilà, you’ll have English!

Nadine’s original design is very different from mine (and much more creative!), and her blog is full of marvelous things — well worth checking out!   I DIDN’T use her tutorial, though, as I’d forgotten about it, so my hood is a little different.  As you can see below, my pattern was kludged up over several iterations:

Here are the differences between mine and the vastly superior Nadine version:

• The back edge of her hood is curved (probably a good idea!); mine is straight
• The long ends of my version are toooo wide; Nadine’s are about an inch and a half narrower.  That’s better!
• Nadine put all the buttonholes on one side on her pattern, but one of her examples has the buttons and loops alternating; that’s what I did on mine
• Her pattern has rounded edges at the bottom of the scarf; mine has points, which I prefer.  She’s made a bunch of very good-looking hoodie/scarves with the rounded ends, though.

Let this be a lesson to all of us that organization matters: I found Nadine’s tutorial, a week after I’d finished my hood, when I finally go to the bottom of the pile of papers on my desk.  I had printed out the tutorial two weeks before Thanksgiving!  After I’d made mine, but before I found Nadine’s pattern, Mr. Noile and I spent quite a few minutes trying to figure out all the configurations for this garment — all because I had not noticed the fourth button at the neck, which is more than obvious on Nadine’s pattern.

Inspiration source (and a better pattern!):

Nadine’s free tutorial and pattern are here.  She asks that you send her a photo if you make one up.  Mine’s on the way to her.

Related: Embellishment

A dear relative recently acquired a Kindle DX, and wanted a case for it.  There are lots of e-reader cases around, but not so many for the over-size DX, so I decided to see what I could whip up.

The first issue was the Kindle itself; Mr. Noile and I both have Sony e-readers, so I needed to see the Kindle before I could figure out a design.  Happily for me, Staples now carries Kindle in-store — a brand-new development.

I trotted over to the store with a transparent quilting template in hand and outlined the Kindle on the template, not forgetting to stand the Kindle on its edge so that I could get the width.

The store’s manager, who saw me messing with his Kindle, asked if he could help  me.  When I explained, he grinned and said “Creative!  I like it!” instead of showing me the door.  How cool was that?!

It was important that the case be nice to handle;  it also had to be easy to get the e-reader in and out of it; and the closure had to be simple but effective.  Early on, I decided it would have an open top and a loop-and-button closure, but I went through probably six different design prototypes, before deciding on something completely different from what I’d originally intended.

My relative is a scientist — a mycologist, to be precise.  I really, really wanted to make this case of felt, and add a lovely, lethal example of Amanita muscaria to the front.

It might not be everybody‘s dream to have images of poisonous mushrooms around, but it probably would have been just right in this case.

Alas!  It was not to be.  I was able to find the necessary colors, but the only in horrid synthetic felt, and the good wool felt pieces in my stash were all wrong, color-wise.  Just the same, I tried, and made a prototype from the yucky felt.  It looked looked, well, cheap.   Felt made of recycled plastic may be noble, and it may be fine for costumes, but it’s downright awful for anything that matters.

Plan B was to locate real wool felt.  I’d thought I’d find it one stop away on the turnpike, at Olde Peddler Wools.

Not exactly, as it turned out.  But I DID find a fantastic store, which deserves its own post.  (And will get it, too, as soon as I catch up.)  The wools at Olde Peddler are (mostly) hand-dyed, and (mostly) cut into various lengths for rug-making.  Sadly, though,there was nothing remotely useful for creating a mushroom-adorned case.

I did, however, find a lovely piece of felted wool.

I used the original template to make a pattern, adding a small seam allowance, and then measuring around the sides and bottom to get the length of the strip that connects the front and back.

I discovered that the December 2010 issue of Good Housekeeping (what a terrible magazine!  but useful, in this case) was the exact thickness of the DX, so I held my  nose and bought a copy.  I used that to determine the width of the side strip, adding seam allowances, of course.

There was just enough wool in the pre-cut piece to make the front, back, and the side band.  For the lining, I’m afraid, I had to resort to the dreadful felt.  No matter; it worked fine, and it’s hidden, so it can’t easily offend aesthetically.

E-readers need protection when they are lying about, and the screens demand respect, so I used the quilting template for  front and back reinforcement pieces, and cut them to the exact size of the Kindle.

Front and back each had three layers. Above, you can see utility felt on the bottom, the thin plastic template in the middle, and the lovely wool on top.  Sorry about the chopped off corners at the top . . . I’m better with my sewing machine than with my camera.

I decided the best closure would be a loose loop with an over-sized button, so I attached oval elastic to the back lining before assembly.  I debated anchoring it to the template and/or the back of the case, but the extra support didn’t seem necessary .  .  .

but I did make sure that I zig-zagged very far down the elastic for durability.

I originally planned to do a blanket stitch around the outside, however my fingers balked  — they’re iffy from way too much computer use — so I gave up that scheme, too, but not before I’d outlined a guide all around the front:

For the button, though, I punched two holes through the plastic template, and made sure it was sewn through all layers.  I didn’t want this closure to be frustrating, and a mobile button was not a recipe for success.

Preliminaries finished, all that remained was to baste the front and back to the edging strip (how did I manage to take not one photo of that???).  I zig-zagged all around, encasing the raw edges (including at the front and back openings), and there it was:

Unfortunately, this is where I goofed up a bit:  My seams were a bit smaller than they should have been, since I’d originally planned for a wider blanket stitch.  No matter; I left them just as they were, since I was far more worried about the case being too small than a bit larger than necessary.

That seems to have been a good choice; the case turns out to be just as easy to use as I’d hoped, and appeared to please the recipient very much.  Mission accomplished, if many iterations later, and in a radically different form than first visualized!  I’m loving my new “well, that didn’t work, where do I go next?” sewing style!

Sources:

The lovely mushroom family image can be found here.

Kindle image from Amazon.

Disclaimer: No one supplied remuneration to me for anything mentioned in this blog post.