How to Rip Back a Knitting Project Without Crying (Much)

I'm working on a hilarious sweater pattern, and I got so eager to watch the colourwork develop that I completely forgot to do the side shaping.  Unfortunately this meant I had to pull back 5 rows. Not too bad, but it's a long way around and it made me sad.  To make things easier, I figured out how to insert my circular needle into the row I had to rip back to, and I thought I'd share!

Oh but, sorry for the shoddy pictures...

Identify the row you need to rip back to.

Insert the needle under the right side loop of each stitch.

Be careful to stay along the same row. It's easy to shift to next row if you're not watching properly.

Work all the way around. If you're working in the round, remember that you're spiralling upward!

Pull back the yarn... (please excuse my messy messy livingroom)

...until all the stitches are active on your needles!

And then good luck detangling all the yarn you just ripped back.

Thrifted Leather Jacket: Deconstruction and Recreation (Pic Heavy)

 

I've been working hard on my entry for the Refashion contest over at PR, and taking a whole whack of pictures.  I'm serious, a Whole Whack of them.  I'm going to share all the fun I've had with taking apart and cutting out pattern pieces from this leather coat

DECONSTRUCTION:

I noticed a lot of neat things about this jacket while taking it apart.  Some are design features, other are construction methods, and I thought I'd share some of my favourites here.

This leather jacket is made up of smaller leather pieces seamed together. One of the things that impressed me was how they incorporated the slit (???) pocket and bound buttonhole along the seamline at the hip.  I thought this was a great idea, and really shows the quality of this jacket (it's by Danier, btw, and the leather is so soft and supple). 

I like that they included a piece of leather inside the pocket so that you don't see the pocket lining fabric from the outside of the coat.  I learned this lesson on my corduroy jacket's welt pockets, but it's nice to see a good example of how such a little detail can make such a difference.  Especially if your pocket lining material is bright.

Because the bound buttonholes were so thick, they made a tall shank at the base of the buttons, and then anchored the button with a smaller one of the backside for more support.  If I were doing buttons on my jacket, I'd definitely use this trick to avoid tearing through the leather.  Plus it's a bit cleaner looking on the underside.

Love how their collar turned out. The points are so sharp!  Impressive considering how bulky the leather can be.

You can also see how they topstitched the horizontal seamlines and left the vertical seams alone. This tends to emphasize the horizontal seams and lets the vertical seams disappear a bit more, which helps prevent a patch-quilt sort of look

On the inside, I noticed that all of the seam allowances were glued down, and the horizontal seams were all interfaced.  Not sure about the reasoning for the latter, but I totally stole the former idea.  It's really helpful because you can't actually iron down the seam allowance at all.

I admit, I stopped and petted the suede inside for a while.  SO SOFT!

They bagged the lining, and managed to make both the bottom hem and sleeve hem with no stitches.  I was impressed with how they did this without the hem dropping at all.

Turns out the answer is some sort of interfacing (web? woven? I don't know my interfacings) along the hem where it folds up, and then glue the heck out of the hem. I guess this provided some stability (with leather?) or perhaps kept the fold sharp (???), and the glue helped hold it in place.  Totally stealing this idea. 

RECONSTRUCTION:

So basically, I ripped off the lining, dropped the hem and opened the facings, took off the sleeves and collar, and split the shoulder seam to make a flat piece of fabric.  You can see the first piece laid out on the jacket: the front panel. It was supposed to be cut on the fold so that it's self-faced, but I couldn't do that with my fabric.  I chose to cut out 4 of the front panel and sew two together.

Except there wasn't enough space to cut the facings directly from the jacket. I'd have to patch it.

Hacked off the pocket section

Used binder clips to hold leather pieces together (can't pin leather or else the pin marks would be noticeable)

Try to line up vertical seamline

Stitch, then trim and glue down seam allowance

Topstitch on either side of seamline

Notice afteward that your vertical seamline weren't aligned. Give up and cut out facing piece

Of course, then I messed up.

I forgot to take pictures, but you can see my whining about it over on the contest discussion boards.

The biggest problem was that getting all the pieces I needed was going to be tight as it was.  I actually had to walk away from this all for a couple days because of how upset I was.

When I came back to it, I started on the upper part of the two piece sleeve, which was going to be in leather.  I cut it out from the original jacket's sleeve, but had to patch on a piece to the bottom due to the pattern sleeve being a bit longer and the grossness of the original jacket's sleeve hem.  Used the same method as above.

This leather, btw, is beautiful to work with.  I've been using size 12 sharp needles instead of leather needles, and there hasn't been any problems.  Well, there was one, but I'll talk about that in a sec.

Once I got through the sleeves, I went back and frankensteined a new inside facing, being extra cautious to cut it the right way.  You can see the new frankensteined facing piece on the left above, and the front panel on the right.  I took great care to make sure that the two front panels matched as much as possible, and that the seamlines for the patched facings were not lined up with the seamlines of the front panels to reduce bulk.

I then stitched the front panel and facing together.  I don't have pics here right now, but I had two problems with this:

1. The seam curves a bit inward at the top and bottom, so the whole front line of the jacket looks a bit curved. I decided that I can live with this, because unpicking leather is hard.
2. I chose to topstitch along the edge of this seam, and I broke a needle half way going over the fankensteined facing seamlines.  Oh well, I'll just use a stronger needle next time.

 

I forgot to mention, but before stitching everything together, I decided to freshen up the leather a bit.  Many internet sources suggested using a mix of lemon juice and olive oil, so I did just that.  The lemon juice cleaned the leather, and the oil added moisture.  The test strip above was taken from directly adjacent to the piece it's laying over, and you can see the difference it made!

This is all that's left of the jacket after I was through with it.  Unusable scraps to the right, and possibly useful pieces to the left.  And in fact, I'm going to have to get the 4 triangular shoulder yokes from these scraps somehow because there is literally none of the wool jacket left to cut them out. 

I'm a bit proud of how I've managed to use up all the material from these jackets!  Let's hope that the final result turns out.  If it doesn't though, I've learned a heck of a lot on this project.  :)

If you managed to get through this extremely long post, thanks so much for your patience!  I didn't realize it would be such a beast until I was half-way through it. 

WIP Post (Oh the WIP!)

Oh goodness, I have the WIP bug.  NOT the UFO bug, these projects are still ongoing.  But I seem to have a tough time finishing something before moving onto another project.  Instead of waiting until they're finished and never posting anything, I figured I'd share the projects (and maybe get a handle on where I'm at with them).  Oh, and it's not all knitting!  There's a sewing project in there too!

This here is my longest WIP (so far).  It's a pretty shawl called Summer Flies, and I suspect that I knit it far too tight.  I only have one last section to go, and I'm only just now starting the second ball of yarn (and I was supposed to use them both up).  Plus it looks like it'll barely cover my shoulders.  But I'm praying to the Blocking Goddess that it'll block larger, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

This is nearly done, and barely took any time to do.  It's a doll (minus the head and arms) knit flat to be stitched up the back and stuffed.  I keep forgetting to pick up stuffing, hense why this has stalled.  A couple weeks ago, a woman in the States put out a call for donations of knitted/crocheted/sewn/whatever child-sized picc line covers and medical play dolls for a Children’s Rehab Centre in Washington, DC, where a friend of hers works as a Recreation Therapist.  I'll let you go read about it over on her dreamwidth account, since she explains it better than I can, but I'm making up a couple dolls to send along, and will probably do more after Christmas. 

I just have to finish the blasted things.

I think I mentioned it before, but I'm making up all of my Christmas gifts this year.  Or at least, I hope to!  I'm ambitious like that.  This fuzzy halo will (hopefully) be a lacy cowl for one of my friends.  She works in a (cold) office, and tends to wear a lot of scarves and what not.  I think this will be right up her alley.  I hope.  But man, have I messed up a bunch on this already.  Hopefully it won't be noticed.  I have, however, learned couple of new skills with it:

• SSK (slip slip knit - this youTube video was really helpful)
• Using markers before each repeat. Whoa man so much easier!
• Counting 154 stitches of a fine and fuzzy yarn on circular needles is hard

Here's another started gift, a toque for my brother.  Except that I cast onto a larger needle to keep the cast on stitches loose, and was going to transfer it to a smaller circular needle.  Except that I'm using the needle for the cowl above...oops.

Oh hey look, it's a sewing project!  You might recognize the fabric, it's the top I mention here (aha, let's not talk about the wardrobe contest) out of the fabric that Kristin sent me.  I just need to sew on the sleeves and hem the blasted thing, but my sewjo is completely gone at the moment.  It'd better come back soon though, because I have a pair of pants I need to hem for an interview on Monday.  Yeash.


But Wait! What is This?  Are These FINISHED OBJECTS?!

AHA I lied, I do have a couple of finished projects! 

The first is a set of dishcloths that, once combined with some locally made soap (using our Territorial flower too - woo all Yukon made!), made up a house-warming gift for Heather over at FussWorks.  :)  The dishcloths were pretty easy to do, although the sead-stitched stripes were a bit more difficult and I had to frog one section about 3 times before I got it right.

The other FO is a lacy scarf from a knitting book I took out from the library, Last Minute Knitted Gifts.  It's a fantastic book with lots of cute projects in it, but if you can find all of the projects on Ravelry, including any corrections to the patterns.  And there's a lot of corrections.  Which is kind of annoying.

No corrections on this scarf though.  It's a super simple pattern, and taught me just what the YO, k2tog combination does (hint: the eyelet row).  It was also the first pattern that I ever blocked.  It grew a lot, which was good because boy was it small.  The hardest part of this project was dealing with the super fine and fuzzy (which likes to tangle together and is hard to rip back) mohair and silk yarn.  But boy is it luxurious when around your neck!

So that's where I'm at.  Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I've been working away on stuff (as you can see), but I haven't really felt like sharing.  And then you know how it is, it builds up on you and suddenly it just all seems overwhelming.  Hense the post of WIP (and FO) DOOM.

Hope you're WIPs are becoming FOs!

Have you ever been given a sewing tip that changes everything?

While working on a dress yesterday, I was thinking about sewing skills, and the tips and tricks I've learned along the way. I think one of the most useful tips I've ever received was about easing in a sleeve.

I hate easing in sleeves, but I get better at them with every attempt. That's partially because of a tip passed on by Steph from 3 Hours Past the Edge of the World.

After whining about my various failed attempts, Steph suggested that I put the side of the fabric to be eased down against the feed dogs to prevent bunching and help ease the fabric. That...wasn't...how I'd be doing it previously. I think about this tip every time I have to ease in fabric now. Such a little thing, but it makes a world of difference.

Thanks Steph, for the great sewing tip! It's been immensely helpful in my ongoing war against sleeves!

I think that this shared bank of knowledge is one of the things I love best about the online sewing community. Everyone is so supportive and helpful, and it makes sewing so much more enjoyable.

Do you have a favourite or useful tip that you're glad to have learned? Is there anyone who has passed on a great tip to you, however obvious or simple?