Thistle down progress

This is the next step in my thistle down top.  

I've tacked all the motifs to a piece of stiffish interfacing and am now adding a net in between each piece to make it a whole fabric.  The netting I'm doing in this lower half is just a simple 5 chain net.  Above the motifs I will fill in with a fancier netting.

If you look closely you can see the tacking thread and a few pins.

 

The faeries made me do it.

These are some wrist bands I've been making.
 I delve into my bags of scraps and thread and start stitching. When I embroider the stitches I use are very basic and rough..  I want to make things that are beautiful but not perfectly beautiful. In fact very imperfect.  I use blunt scissors and work in quite a bit of chaos.  Kitchen table covered in all sorts of mess - so I push it back a bit and make a space.  I have a box of beads that over the years have become more and more muddled.  I always am amazed when there is an article about an artist or crafts person with a photo of their perfectly ordered studio.  I wonder if  they have spent a week cleaning or if they really do keep all there supplies in neat little boxed shelves.  I look at my beads and think I could sort them out but somehow never get around to it.



My favourite one



The one I like best is the orange one.  Orange being my favourite colour. Its the least ordered and has some fabric beads. 

second favourite

 The next one has appliqued petals from paper flowers I dismantled and then added bead centres.



third favourite.



The third one is pink and aqua with lots of gold trim. 

I used to wonder where my taste for ornamentation came from and then realised it was all my formative years spent in the catholic church.  Priests in brocade and alter boys in lace. Side alters with statues of saints in pastels, festooned with flowers, all bathed in the glittering light from candles and stained glass windows.



Thistle down

 

My latest project is an update on an old project.  It was intiially inspired by some motifs in a Russian crochet magazine called 'Aynaet'.  Each motif had a graph so I could work out more or less how to make them.  I joined them altogether using a 'ground' from an Irish Crochet book, added some sleeves and turned it into a cardican. 

This time I'm going to add some leaf motifs and plan it a bit more carefully.  Usually I don't plan very much and things just turn out how they do.  Sometimes good, some times not.

The yarn I'm using is 50% kid mohair and 50% nylon.  Its  very fine

 lace weight which I love for crocheting.

   This is the original cardican

.

Seat Pad

First I must say that the colour of these photos is wrong.  In real life it is are much more orange.  I actually prefer the more pink version.  There must be something on my camera that needs adjusting - too much technology. 

This is my first seat pad.  I'm going to make 3 more.  When I showed Amelia she said 'is that so the cats will be more comfortable!'  Well no, it's so I'll be more comfortable. 

This is quite an extravagant pattern, mainly because I have lots of yarn that I bought on sale.  I have used 3 strands of double knit throughout.  Its a  wool/mohair/soy mix. It also has a backing that is double knit (worsted weight) acrylic.  My favourite part is the bobbles on the backing come through the gaps on the fringing on the front. I didn't plan that but it seemed like a fun thing to do. 

Blossom Blanket.

For a long time I’ve wanted something – anything – with pink blossom on a blue background. There is just something about that image that I just love.

When I started out making the blanket I didn’t have much of a plan except to use the blue wool I had made into my lovely centre pull balls. It’s just a simple double crochet square. As I crocheted I thought how boring it was, so to keep myself interested I thought of what else I could do with it.. And so began the blossom blanket.

The branches are rows of one double crochet with a single chain for turning and every now and again I increased it to two double crochet and back down to one again to give it a bit of texture.

The blossoms are 10 single crochet into a circle then 2 chain and a 3 double crochet cluster into the first stitch, 2 ch and a slip stitch into the next stitch, first petal then repeat that 4 more times and you have a 5 petal flower. I stitched them on with the back side to the front so the petals are like little puffs.  I'm also thinking I might embroider some darker pink centres into the flowers and possibily even add more flowers.

`Centre Pull Ball.

I’ve just finished unpicking a couple of old cardies. I wound the wool into shanks and then washed and dried it before rolling it into balls. Something I like to make is centre pull balls so I don’t have balls that roll all over the place when I’m working from them.

You start by winding the end of yarn around your thumb a few times. This is the thread that will be pulled from the centre when you’re finished.

Next you start winding the yarn around three fingers and the tip of the thumb. Keep all the winding loose/soft.

When you’ve wound a couple of dozen times remove it from the three fingers but keeping the yarn wound on the thumb. Now hold the wound yarn with the three fingers and the thumb in the centre of the yarn.

Keeping the thumb in the same position as you wind around the fingers and yarn. (Winding around the fingers helps keep the ball loose) Ever few winds remove the fingers and make a quarter turn until all the yarn is used.

Tuck the end under; remove your thumb along with the centre pull thread.

Barking and Burping

Adventures in brioche knitting.

Well it took me about 3 nights before I managed to get any knitting on my needles. I first taught myself how to do the Italian cast-on, and then with 2 colours! Going straight into the pattern with no ribbing was also a challenge. Each second stitch is slipped with a yo, so on the first row everything gets twisted. What a nightmare.

So very carefully I finally managed to get started, following the pattern row by row. Two rows in one direction, then two back in the other direction. As with any pattern when you’re starting out, it’s hard to see how the pattern works. My biggest problem was working out if I was doing a plain row or a purl row (barking or burping) Except for the colour both sides of the work are identical. I had to make myself lots of ittle diagrams with different coloured pens, and arrows trying to make sense of it. After reversing the colours a couple of times accidentally it eventually dawned on me. The predominant colour facing is a knit row with that colour, followed by a purl row with the contrasting colour. Brilliant!

It’s a scarf by the way, with just 30 stitches – not too many to undo when I make a mistake. Because I unintentionally changed colours at the beginning I’m now using that as my pattern - random colour changes.

‘Bark’ is brioche knit stitch and ‘burp is brioche purl stitch.

The Russian Hat

I came across this hat when I was looking for a hat pattern for my sister-in-law the other day. It’s from Vouge Knitting so I can’t give you the pattern but it is available on their website. http://store.vogueknitting.com/p-260-russian-hat.aspx

 http://store.vogueknitting.com/popup.aspx?src=images/product/large/260_2_.jpg

Or it’s in the 2007 holiday issue. I thought it was quite cute so had to have a go at making it.

The first problem, not of my own making, I encountered was the gauge. The pattern recommended needle size was 6.5mm (10 1/2), obtaining a gauge of 10sts and 16 rows over 10cm (4ins). Admittedly I didn’t have the yarn they prescribed but instead used 2 strands (as in pattern) of something called 'confetto', plus an extra strand of mohair. A single strand of this yarn had a recommended needle size of 7mm. I’m wondering if they gave the needle size for a single strand of yarn instead of a needle size for 2 strands because there’s no way I could get that gauge on that size needle. Anyway I used three strands from my stash and size 9mm needles.

The pattern is knitted on a mixture of normal needles, a circular needle and double pointed needles. The double pointed needles were used at the very top of the crown when there were too few stiches for the circular. As I didn’t have any dpns of the right size I decided to crochet the very top. I removed one of the yarn strands (now only 2 strands-one being the mohair) and single crocheted each knit stitch from the needle and then decreased 8 stitches for each single crochet round.  I removed one of the yarn strands because the crochet stitch is bulkier than the knitted stitches.

I also added a little tag at the top.

The third change was adding the ‘wool’. The pattern uses a yarn called ‘Curly’ with a loop simply pulled through each purl st bump.

Once again I didn’t have the appropriate yarn, but did have some boucle yarn. Working vertical rows I sc 1 into first purl st bump then dtr 1 into the next purl st bump, over the flaps and around the edges of the hat. I also added a couple of bobbles to the ends of the ties.

Machine darning.

What do you do when that favourite pair of jeans, the pair that are so well worn they feel like a second skin, the pair you really don’t want to have to throw out…has finally succumb to a rip! The thought of a big ugly patch doesn’t appeal either. Machine darning to the rescue! (you can use this technique on any piece of worn clothing.)

It’s a simple technique but it does take a bit of practice to get the feel of using the machine without the presser foot and the feed dog (the little teeth that help feed the fabric  from the bottom) down.

This technique DOES NOT COMPLY WITH OH&S so please take care. You can use an embroidery foot, which is a little circle that hovers over the fabric. It acts as a needle guard. I find it a bit annoying to use, so don’t.- Live dangerously.

You need to match some sewing thread to the denim. The better the match the more ‘invisible’ the final patch will be.

You also need some backing fabric. Choose a similar weight fabric to the weight of the garment that you are patching. You can use matching denim. I sometimes go to the local op-shop and buy an old pair of jeans.

Make sure you have heavy duty machine needles. Don’t be surprised if you break the odd one!

 Cut out a piece of backing fabric to cover the hole. If the fabric around the hole is thin (which it usually is) make the backing patch cover this thin fabric as well. Turn the garment inside out.

Now you can pin the patch directly to the garment or you can use a fusing mesh – the sort used for appliqué. Iron the mesh on to the patch and then iron it in place on the wrong side of the garment.

If you are just using pins (which is what I do) turn the garment to the right side and re-pin from the right side.You could also put a running stitch around the outside of the patch so you know where the edges are as you will be stitching on the right side. Trim the loose threads from the rip.

My machine has a switch on the side for putting the feed-dog down. If you don’t know how to do this have a look in your sewing machine manual. I think most modern machines have this function.

Next remove the presser foot and replace with the embroidery foot if you choose to use one.

Even though you no longer have a presser foot you still have to remember to put the presser foot leaver down as this engages the top tension.

The actual stitching is the part you may need to practice for a while, to get the feel of how to hold the fabric flat and move it at the same time.

There is a bit of fear and trepidation when darning for the first time because the needle is moving very fast, what you need to know is that you have control over how quickly you move the fabric and where the fabric is in relation to your fingers! If you are having trouble, place a piece of fabric in a small embroidery hoop and practice on that. Persevere. The fabric needs to be flat on the machine bed.

There is also a tendency for the thread to break from time to time. Just trim the thread end, re-thread and keep going.

You need to stitch back and forth, with each little row about 2 or 3 cm long and quite close together.

When you come to the end of this back and forth row do another slightly over lapping row. The photo shows the first row in black and the second row in red. Remove the pins as you go. Stitch over the entire patch in this way. Do a couple of stitches in the same place to finish off and then admire your handy-work!