Welcome to Project Knitway or should I say Project Renottaway? It's my cyberspace place to post my favorite things...thoughts about family and creativity and design. One of my favorite things is making stuff, specifically clothing and accessories from fiber and metal. So you'll see a lot about that here. I also love spending time with my family, so there will be a bit about that too. When I'm not with my family or in my studio, I am most likely at nextdoor, my store. I have always had a store ever since I was a young woman. I started with a weaving store called the niddy noddy in Waukesha eons ago. I ended with nextdoor in Brookfield. It's my dream store filled with great clothing, especially denim. Really nice women work and shop there, it's a fun place to be. You can find us there every day and online at www.shopatnextdoor.com So come for a visit here and there.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Seams Like I Been at this Forever

We'll actually I have been at it for some 35 years, yikes! I first discovered textiles and fiber arts while studying for occupational therapy at UW Madison back in the 60's. Little did I know then that I would have a lifelong passion for anything related to yarns, fibers, looms and knitting machines.  In fact my first store was a weaving shop in Waukesha called the Niddy Noddy. Fast forward to the present. I'm still knitting and I still have a store, but it's evolved into a denim store in Brookfield, called Nextdoor.  I have a little corner in the store with some of my clothing and accessories for sale. But back to the topic at hand. Seams!

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm all for the quickest way to get something done, especially when it comes to putting knit pieces together. I've tried lots of methods over the years starting of course with the hand sewing technique. Don't get me wrong, that's a great way to finish a sweater but oh so tedious and can have it's own problems. Like when you discover half way through the seam, one edge has grown 3 inches longer and short of taking a big tuck you have to rip everything out!  My favorite method is to link the pieces together, but since my linker is not linking well, I'll deal with that topic another time. No the best method I've found is sewing the pieces together on the sewing machine. Here again you can run into trouble with the top piece growing as you sew. I used to pin the pieces together but that can be a real mess. The pins fall out, you break a needle sewing over them or worst of all you sew a pin into the seam only to painfully discover it later. Enter the felting needle. (You going to have to picture this as my photographer just left for work.) Lay your two pieces together and needle felt the seam together lightly every 3 to 4 inches. It holds the seams together perfectly while you're sewing the pieces up.  If you insist on hand sewing your seams together, it still works well.

So, that seams to be about it for now. Stay warm and stick to your knitting.

Renotta