more walnut

this time with iron as modifier. got a lovely  new york city taupe color. this will be the herringbone warp . woven with a black weft it will look very smart.

finishing the knitted skirt. sewing elastic to it was a pain.  when you stretch the elastic the knit also stretches. decided to rip it and do a regular waist casing which worked much better.

waiting for the e knitting machine to arrive. spent all day yesterday answering the buzzer.

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a different animal

sewists know that sewing knits is different from sewing fabrics.

now sewing machine knits is a different different animal. the fabric has to be stabilized in some way because when you cut it unravels ending  up in a useless mess of yarns. sharp scissors or much better, rotary cutters aid in keeping the edges as neat as possible.

there are some ways to stabilise the knit such as using liquid stabiliser, fray check ( envy,envy impossible to get here) iron on fusible web such as bondaweb and if push comes to shove elmer's washable school glue.they'll all disappear when washed.

 you sew a seam about 2 cms away from the seam with long basting stitches, sew the actual seam, take out the basting trim and  finish the  raw edges with overcast stitch. 

side note: if i had a serger it would be easier, but i'm NOT going there.

the walking foot aka plaid matcher is an essential tool when sewing knits with a sewing machine.

it works with the feed dogs  to feed both layers of fabric evenly. thus you don't end with one layer shorter or longer than the other.

disclaimer: although i sound very knowledgeable, do not be fooled. i have been getting all my education here. talk about knowledge transfer!

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new paths and ways

 i had to start from scratch documenting the hack to the e- knitting machine. along the way some surprising finds and possible new paths. once you go electronic you try to apply it to everything you touch, so to speak. 

thanks to my friend lynne brunning, who has opened my mind and pointed me towards new exciting directions, i am going to be working outside my comfort zone  exploring new things  and feel very excited about it.

i find similarities with the time i started weaving seriously. i wanted to do something with the patterning  vocabulary in weaving. started out by weaving some of the  patterns in davison using very bold colors. soon afterwards network drafting came about and i embraced that technology which freed me from the grid.then went wild stamping the warp and adding transferred images to the woven pattern in the warp.

now the call is for electronics and how i can incorporate them to knitted artwork.as i tend to the abstract i won't be knitting brainwaves. but images however abstract can be a starting point.

 have i mentioned before that i love geekery ?  ^_^

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