Donnerstag, 22. August 2019

Escalera Scarf

Recently, I was invited to hold knitting workshops for the first time. I decided to have one on knitting square holes without cutting yarn – a technique I had used in my Negative Spaces Scarf. Since I had only one pattern with this technique, I wanted to design a second one in order to have something more to show and also to remind myself of how to do it.
This scarf is knitted sideways and all in garter stitch , but with square shaped holes. Once you've mastered how to do the square holes, this scarf is great TV or travel knitting.








The pattern is available for puchase 


The pattern PDF contains:
  • a photo tutorial on how to knit the square holes without cutting  yarn, 
  • a schematic plus explanations of the scarf's construction
  • row-by-row instructions to knit this scarf

Materials
  • about 200 grams of fingering weight yarn – I used a Zauberball (Colorway Teezeremonie)
  • two stitch markers – one of them removable
  • 3.25 mm knitting needles
  • a tapestry needle to weave in ends
The scarf I knitted measures 185 cm in length and 50 cm at its widest point. But the pattern is written in a way that you can adapt the size.


Necessary Knitting Skills
Besides plain garter stitch you need the following skills to knit this scarf
  • backwards loop cast on
  • bind off
  • knitted cast on
  • k2togtbl

Samstag, 17. August 2019

Box Pleat Top

I have been meaning to learn to sew for quite a while now. A few months ago, I started in earnest - usually with old fabric that was already available in my home - e.g. old bed linen.
I'm learning quite a bit while doing it, so I think it might be a nice idea to share my learning process when trying to make new clothes without bought sewing patterns. Especially, if I share my mistakes, too :)
My goal now is to sew a top (blouse, shirt etc.) that looks professional enough to wear it at work. I sewed this top twice - the second time with a quite neat facing. I'm not yet there, but I'm getting closer ...


Please note: This is NOT a complete tutorial, but a rough description of the idea.

Creative Commons License
This work by Knitting and so on is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.




Materials
  • about 1 meter of woven fabric - I used old bed linen
  • thread in a matching color
  • scissors (or a rotary cutter)
  • pins
  • a sewing machine
  • a pressing iron
  • a top that fits you well, in order to take the pattern from it
  • paper to draw your pattern on


How-To

1) create your pattern
Fold you top in half and place it on paper. Draw a line about it, adding at least 1cm for seam allowance (except on the fold).


2) cut the front and back
Place your pattern pieces on your fabric and cut them out. Since the top was made of stretchy fabric - and I planned to use (woven) non-stretchy fabric for my top, I added a about three centimeters on the side for front and back. (When in doubt, always cut a bit more - it's easier to take clothes in than out.)
As the original top didn't have a box pleat - I had to add about 5 cm on the fold for the front piece (on the right in the picture below). On the front piece mark the place (at the neckline) for the box pleat.


3) sew the box pleat seam
Fold the front piece in half (right sides together) and sew a seam thats about 7 cm long from the neckline straight down - parallel to the fold (see black dotted line on the picture above).
Now open the piece, distribute the pleat equally on both sides around the seam.
Press the pleat down with your iron and fix the pleat with pins. You can see the result, in the picture below.

4) cut the facings (front and back)
Now fold both pieces in half insides together and place each of them on a piece of fabric. Cut out the same shape than the upper part of the piece. I tried to match the stripe pattern, but since the facing pieces will be on the inside, this is not especially important.
Here, by the way, I made a mistake, as I cut the facing pieces too long - about 15 cm below the armhole. Had I sewn this down the side, the top would have been too tight. So I ended up cropping them shorter.



5) sew facings to outer pieces
Place the facing of the front to the front piece (right sides) together and sew the armholes and the neckline. Do the same with the back piece and its facing.


Cut into the curves, but make sure not to cut your sewing.


Turn both pieces right sides out and give them a good press.

6) sew shoulder seams
Mark one side of both pieces (e.g. the left-hand side) with pins or clips.
Now turn the back piece insides out and draw the shoulder straps of the front piece (right sides out) up throug the back pieces shoulder straps so that the upper edges meet. Make sure that the facing pieces face each other as well as the main pieces. Sew the shoulder seams closed (see dotted lines on the picture below.
Turn the piece back right sides out the press it.


As you can see on the picture above I had now cropped the facing pieces to a curve - in a way that I would only sew a few centimeters into the side seams.

7) sew side seams
Now lay both front and back right sides together and sew the side seams from under the arm to the bottom hem.

8) sew the bottom hem
Fold the lower edge over, fix it with pins and sew it.

Turn your top back right sides out, give it a final press with your iron ...
... and voilà, it's finished.


Montag, 12. August 2019

Sideways Garter Stitch Basket

I never have enough places to store my unfinished knitting or crochet projects. Usually, I prefer bowls or baskets. So, since I had a lot of old T-shirt yarn lying around, I decided to knit a new basket using this yarn.
This basket is knitted sideways all in garter stitch - with short rows for shaping. Because I used a provisional CO and grafted beginning and end together, the piece is seamless.
Of course it can also be used to store or to present other things, e.g. it could be used as a basket for your breakfast rolls :)


Creative Commons License
This work by Knitting and so on is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.






Materials
  • T-shirt yarn, but other heavy weight yarns (e.g. Cotton) will also work - I used about 200 grams of old T-shirt yarn (cut from ribbed jersey) - I worked in stripes. changing after each ridge
  • knitting needles that are rather too small for your yarn (to give it stability) - I used 10mm knitting needles
  • a really big tapestry needle for grafting

Techniques


Instructions

Do a provisional CO of 20 sts
Row 0 (Setup Row): k all sts
Ridge 1: k19 w+t k to end
Ridge 2: k18 w+t k to end
Ridge 3: k17 w+t k to end
Ridge 4: k16 w+t k to end
Ridge 5: k15 w+t k to end
Ridge 6: k14 w+t k to end
Ridge 7: k15 w+t k to end
Ridge 8: k16 w+t k to end
Ridge 9: k17 w+t k to end
Ridge 10: k18 w+t k to end
Ridge 11: k19 w+t k to end
Ridge 12 k all, turn, k all
Repeat ridges 1 to 12 twice more, then knit ridges 1 to 11 once.

Put the stitches from the provisional CO on a second needle.
Cut the yarn, but leave a tail long enough for grafting.
Graft in garter stitch.


If you're not comfortable with provisional CO and grafting, you can change the pattern as follows:
  • instead of row 0, knit one ridge with all stitches
  • then knit ridges 1 to 12 a total of four times - binding off in the last row of the last ridge 12
  • sew the two sides (CO and BO) together



How to Adapt the Size

To make this bigger (or smaller) do more (or fewer) stitches in the provisional CO.
Since I wanted my basket to be about as high as it was wide, I did short rows up to about a third of the total number of stitches.
If you want a different ratio, you have to adapt the number of short rows - e.g. for a wider basket more (and shorter) short rows.