Craft Blog

I first made one of these for my friend Morgan, it was my second ever sewing project and I just hope and pray that she never shows it to me ever again as there was some dodgy sewing going on there! I guess we all have to start somewhere, this one is slightly more complex than my original one, but the finished look is beautiful, and a great way to store your needles. The size also makes it perfect for using up those bits of left over fat quarters that you bought on impulse!

This uses the foundation piecing technique shown in my recent string quilt block tutorial, the string quilt tut has instructions in slightly more detail, so it may be worth checking that out as well.

You will need

All measurements are in inches

• One 17×17 piece for your foundation fabric - I used felt because I wanted a bit of bulk, but you can use a plain cotton. Basically anything without stretch.
• One 17×17 piece of cotton for your inner fabric.
• One 17 x 7 piece of cotton for your pocket
• LOTS of strips 18 inches long by however wide you want, mine are 2 inches, the slimmer you make them the more sewing you have to do but (IMO) the cooler they look, it took 15 strips to cover my case.
• Novelty yarn or ribbon and a button for the closure.

You can also see a dark purple piece of fabric there, I was worried about the light colour of the felt showing through on the inside of the case so I used some old sheeting and sandwiched it to the back of the foundation fabric.

Instructions behind the jump, and bigger pictures are just a click away

Read the rest of this entry »

A very exciting email arrived in my inbox this morning…

K2TOG [Knit Two Together]

The Age 2008 Melbourne Fringe Festival is embarking on a very Exciting - and top secret! – public art project that involves knitting and YOU.

10am – 3:30pm, Saturday 2 August
Handspinners and Weavers Guild
12-20 Shakespeare St, Carlton North

On this day you will receive your instructions and materials required for the project.

All catering will be provided.

All you need to bring is your knitting needles! (Any size)

To register your attendance or for more information contact:
Marie Williams on 03 5968 8655 or by emailing jimmarie@aapt.net.au

or Emma Power, K2TOG Producer, Melbourne Fringe on
9660 9600 or email emma@melbournefringe.com.au

All levels of knitting skills welcome!

I’ll be going along! Hope to see some of you there.

Ed’s Note: Please welcome Charm to CraftBlog, our Victorian crafter extraordinare, this post will hopefully be the first of many here!

When I was a kid my grandma would always have a box of yarn and a bag of needles sitting beside the sofa so it was only natural that I (being a very inquisitive child) would want to learn to knit! She spent hours showing me how to cast on, knit/purl, drop stitches (well maybe I learnt that one myself), increase/decrease and cast off. Most of this was done while creating myself a scarf, the starting point of most knitters experience! I progressed to sweaters and slippers over the years but then other activities took over.

Now that I’m in my 30s and I have space in my house to explore crafting again I’ve realised that I not only forgot how to knit but I now live 1000 kms from my grandma! So I turned to the internet and found a few helpful sites to get me started.

Getting started

There are so many websites out there and some very helpful people making videos to show you what to do. The one I turn to most is KnittingHelp as their video tutorials are easy to understand and the layout of the site shows you examples of each stitch or aspect of knitting. It was through this site that I found the longtail caston which I now use for all my projects. It seems harder to begin with but it is a wonderfully stretchy caston and doesn’t loosen off when you work the first row like some caston methods do.

Simple patterns

Once you’ve cast on and are knitting row after row of gorgeous stitches you might want to look at a simple pattern that will provide you with something more than a scarf (not that there is ANYTHING wrong with scarves! I love them!). A great site to start with is Knitty. They’ve been around for about 6 years now and have a fantastic archive of patterns, some very handy hints, a forum to get nerdy with other knitters and best of all a knitting shorthand dictionary. A few things that are on my list to try (I’m still looking at Mellow and Tangy patterns) are these very functional legwarmers and calorimetry head cover. Obviously living in Melbourne has a pretty big impact on what I want to knit!

Communities

As with most activities on the internet they culminate in communities, the Knitty forum is one of them, there is also Ravelry, KnitPicks and this one seems busy Knitting@LiveJournal. But you don’t have to keep it online. The most awesome thing about knitting is that its a portable craft, we can take it with us wherever we go, on the tram, in the car, at a cafe waiting for our chocolate cake and coffee to arrive… We can participate in KnitAlongs, get together with strangers and Knit in Public, start ourselves a Stich’n'Bitch with some of our friends at the local pub or if you want to be all gansta like, get a knitting graffiti team together. I think the most important thing about knitting though isn’t what you make, or how you made it, but how it makes you feel when the finished product is being used.

So get out there, KNIT! and then come back and show us what you’ve made.