Craft Challenge!
It’s winter for the top half of the planet so for our first craft challenge, I challenge everyone to make scarves! Here are two tutorials for two different types of scarves, but feel free to alter these plans or do something entirely different, as long as it’s a scarf in the end!
Scarf #1 is a knit scarf. Knitting always seemed really difficult for me and when I tried to learn from books I failed really hard, but once I looked around YouTube it was a lot easier to learn and I started having a lot of fun knitting!
Every time I start a new project I have to relearn how to cast stitches onto my needle and usually I use this video.
Materials for a knit scarf:
2 skeins of chunky yarn. The real thick stuff.
Real thick needles. Mine are US size 13 (UK 00). Anywhere between 10 and 13 will do. The yarn package will have a recommendation for needle size you can use but it’s not the boss of your life. (My needles in this pic are super long and meant for wide projects. You don’t need real long needles, my shorter ones are just in another scarf ATM).
Felt to make a patch. One main color and one border color to make the main color pop.
Matching colored thread.
A sewing needle
Scissors
Cast on a good amount of stitches in a multiple of 4. We’re going to make a ribbed scarf with two stitches facing us and 2 facing away so keeping in a multiple of 4 makes the pattern repeat nicely. Also make sure you count the loop you used to start casting on as a stitch! I did 28 here for a scarf about 6 inches wide. Anywhere between 24 and 32 is a good amount of stitches.
Knit two stitches, then two purls, then two stitches. When you reach the end swap the needles in your hands and go back the other direction. It’ll look kind of like a mess for the first few rows but once you get 4 or 5 on there you’ll see the ribs take shape!
Once your scarf is a couple inches long cut some fringe pieces off the second skein of yarn you haven’t used yet. You could do this first but I like to have a chunk of scarf to see first so I can visualize how long I want the fringe!
These pieces are twice as long as the scarf is wide so once they’re tied on they’ll be about as long as is it wide. You can go mega long if you want though. If you cast on 28 stitches, cut 56 pieces. You’ll want enough to tie one onto every stitch on both ends. Do this before you use up all the yarn or you’re in trouble!
Once you have the pieces continue knitting until it’s as long as you like or you run out of yarn. The term for finishing a piece of knitting so it comes off the needles is “casting off” or “binding off” if you’re just now learning. Here’s a video!
Now for the patch! I’m a Sagittarius and my patron is Equius (My birthday is today, December 21!) so I went with the sag symbol. I advise that you take your felt or a piece of paper and lay it onto the scarf so you can see how large it needs to be to adequately fit the scarf. I laid my felt down, cut out a square as large as I wanted the patch, then free handed it from there. It’s probably a better idea to sketch the patch out on paper first haha
Boom. Sagittarius arrow. That pencil did not work on my felt so I eyeballed it.
Next, pin the patch onto the felt you’re using as a border color and carefully stitch around the edges with your needle and matching thread.
Reverse angle! You could use a blanket stitch (used in the next tutorial) but I wanted these stitches to be less noticeable.
Next step is a pain. The knit of the scarf wants to move around as you sew so you’ll have to constantly readjust the patch as you go. I stretched the scarf to about half of its max and pinned the patch in place. Then I stitched just at the border where the blue meets the white.
Now for the fringe! Stretch out the ends of the scarf and notice the holes between stitches. With a chunky yarn knitted with large needles they’ll be easy to see! Thread your yarn pieces through these large holes and make a Girth Hitch (I didn’t know that was the name of this knot, I just googles it right now). Do it like this:
Once you have all the fringe pieces on you’re done! This scarf takes about 5-6 hours to make depending how much you lollygag and how familiar you are with knitting but it’s a simple first project and can be customized with different colors of yarn and different decorations!
If knitting seems like too much to pick up at the moment, this next scarf is fleece and only takes about an hour and a half to make if you turn Skype off!
Materials:
A piece of fleece MINIMUM 16 inches long (assuming the width on the bolt is 62 inches). But cuts aren’t always straight so get another 2 or 3 inches of leeway!
Colored felt to make a patch. Whatever your heart desires.
Matching thread.
A sewing needle
Scissors
A tape measure or ruler (not pictured)
Something to mark measurements with (pen, wheely thing, tailor’s chalk)
Fold your fleece in half so the curled ugly edges meet at either the left or the right. Make sure the edge at the bottom is as even as possible. If there’s any angle to it, carefully trim it flat.
I want my scarf to be 8 inches wide so I measured 8 inches every couple of inches or so and marked those points with my baby pizza cutter fabric marker. Do this all the way from one end to the other
Connect all your markings and cut a long strip!
The length of this scarf right now is 62 inches and I felt that would be too short after fringe was cut into it so I measured another section of 8 inch wide felt to create the fringe. This fringe I wanted long as hell so it’s 11 inches long.
Cut the ugly ends off wherever they are on your fabric.They’re a waste product of the way the fleece of manufactured and we don’t need them.
We’re going to want to sew the fringe pieces to the scarf on the WRONG side of the fabric. You can find the wrong side of fleece by gently stretching an edge. The fleece will curl toward the wrong side, so if it curls up you already have it faced wrong side up!
Pin the fringe pieces to the body of the scarf and sew them together. The seam should be up on the wrong side of the fabric so the right side looks nice. I learned to hand sew using this tutorial. You can use a sewing machine but I didn’t want to be rude and say “you can hand sew this but I cheated and used a machine so it was easier for me than it’s going to be for anyone who doesn’t have one haha deal with it”.
Pictured above is both sewn sides, closer one wrong side up and farther one right side up.
VERY CAREFULLY cut the fringe pieces into even strips. If you can’t trust your eyeballing you can mark the cuts before you make them. Stop about 1/4 inch before you get to the seam. You don’t want to cut the thread!
Now for the Homestuck. Once again I measured out how much space I should use so the patch was a good size for the space.
This patch was going to be Doc Scratch so I doodled him out on paper and transferred the shape to the felt. Because the colors of the felt and the fleece were so different I didn’t feel the need to border it with anything.
He needed a tie don’t you think?
To apply Doc I used a blanket stitch. It’s an easy hand stitch for applying one fabric onto another. Start from the bottom and bring your needle up at the edge where the two fabrics meet, then dip the needle into the applique and bring it back up out the base fabric. Keep the needle above the thread trailing from the previous stitch and when you pull it, it will form a chain! There are plenty of videos on youtube if you need a moving visual aid.
When you bring the needle back up you don’t need to exactly meet the exact edge where the two fabrics will meet. Once you pull the thread taught they’ll meet together nicely all on their own. Like this:
Stitch along every edge and you’re done! Bow tie just got sewn on normal.
This project takes about an hour and a half. 2 if you’re on Skype and eating dinner.
If you participate in this craft challenge, remember to tag your post “MSPACC” first! (Tumblr only uses the first 5 tags for tag searches). We’ll watch the tag and reblog what you make!
