Dark blue shawl

I am in love with wool fabrics usually used to sew costumes for men: they are very responsible to iron, easy to clean, cool and at the same time warm enough to wear during whole year. I am also like to use unconventional materials. So when I had a piece of fabric, left from my trousers, I decided to make a project which is not typical for it: a shawl.

But simple hemming can look boring and I decided to place embroidery on my feature shawl. Embroidery should not be technically difficult, because I did not want to spend years on these one and half meters of the fabric, so I drawn curvy lines and chose very simple chain stitch which presents on many folk embroidery pieces and can be sewn using either a needle or crochet hook. I decided to use crochet.



I did not use embroidery hoop to achieve folding effect. Ending for this shawl is very easy: crocheted arcs and fringe.

Blue sky jacket

About one year ago I purchased yarn and even created a sample for this jacket. I finished it for this winter season. I wish I could create blog posts in time =)

Inspiration for the jacket was a tree which has beautiful magenta flowers in summer and very picturesque without leaves in winter:

Another effect, unfortunately, cannot be seen on the photograph, but the tree looks wonderful when sky has bright cold blue color. Having this picture in my mind I created a pattern and knitted it on the back of the jacket.

Such a noticeable pattern requires simple silhouette and I choose one of my favorites: jacket, inspired by medieval East Asian clothing. Centers of its back and front are knitted with reverse stockinette stitch while side sides are knitted together with sleeves using stockinette stitch. All edges are finished using i-cord. Buttons and holes are made from i-cord too.

Jacket also has zipper beneath decorative closure. I was considering about making its front simple without decorations at all like on this picture of the wrong side, but I decided not to create such a noticeable contrast with the back.

Jacket also has chain on the back low edge.

Embroidered tree, hiding wrong side of the pattern.

Pattern for the embroidered tree was made from the same picture as knitted one.

Technique is pretty simply: only back stitches, slightly offset-ted from each other.