Dear Readers: Right from the beginning, the sole point of this blog has been to infect YOUR mind with the knitting tricks which are desperate to ESCAPE mine. Two insistent tricks which have recently been knocking to be be let out involve sewing. So, here's the BIG QUESTION:
Would YOU be interested in posts which include
sewing techniques?
sewing techniques?
The specific ideas that really want out are these:
First, a series about how to line a sweater-jacket. A reader wrote a long time ago asking for such a series, but I've waffled shamefully because I wasn't sure that this belongs in a knitting technique blog.
This series would include everything, from start to finish: what materials to use for lining, how to use the jacket to create the pattern for the lining, how to add an underarm gusset, how to sew the lining itself together, and how to stitch the lining into the jacket.
Also included would be a couple of posts on putting a zipper closure into a garment. While handy for all genders and ages, experience shows zippers are especially attractive to kids and men. Kids are often too impatient or unskilled to operate buttons, and (taking a risk with stereotyping here) men who "don't like sweaters" will sometimes wear zippered ones when they might not wear buttoned or pull-over ones...
The second idea which keeps knocking to get out of my head is a series on a wonderful storage and transport system for WIP's--a sewn cover-bag with replaceable liner baskets. The WIP's live in the interchangeable baskets with all their parts--the pattern, the yarn, the needles (and depending on your age, your extra pair of reading glasses). The cover-bag fits over the baskets. When you leave the house, you throw whichever WIP suits the situation into the cover-bag--a simple scarf for noisy and distracting places, a lace shawl to keep you company while you sip coffee, a sweater with miles of plain knitting for the airport. The cover bag has handles and makes it easy to carry around the basket of work without spilling or losing anything, the interchangeable baskets mean you won't accidentally leave part of your project home..
You'll be able to follow these two series if you can do the following three things:
1) sew straight stitches on a sewing machine
2) sew zig-zag on a sewing machine
3) overcast (whip stitch) by hand
Any sewing technique harder than these (and there are very few) will be explained and illustrated just like knitting posts are: with line drawings and illustrations.
So... would you find these two subjects interesting, or does this sound like too much sewing?
To encourage response from readers who don't often comment (you lurkers know who you are!) and to reward those who do, there will be a
PRIZE DRAWING!!
All readers responding before November 5, 2007 will be entered in a random drawing for one $20.00 KNITPICKS gift certificate. (Knitpicks is one on-line store where $20.00 can actually buy you something!--HOWEVER, if you are responding from outside the USA and your name is drawn--we'll figure out an equivalent prize that you can use--never fear...) The winning name will be drawn and posted on November 5, 2007 (TECHknitting's one-year Blogiversary!!) so if you've reading this in the archives, and it's before H-Hour... go for it.
With a big thank you for your feedback--
--TECHknitter