January 18, 2009

Question of the Week

Question of the Week:

Do you prefer crochet clothing designed in Small, Medium and Large?
Or
Do you prefer the sizes: Large, Extra Large and Double Extra Large?
This is in women sizes.

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Putting a Zipper on a Crochet Jacket

How to Put a Zipper on a Crochet Jacket
Crochet Jacket with Hood is my latest pattern at Donna's Crochet Designs and thought a tutorial on how to sew a zipper into a crochet jacket would be of interest. Begin by laying the jacket out on a flat surface with the front edge opening together. Place the zipper between both front edges. Adjust the edges so that they are not right on the zipper's teeth, but lay just to either side.
Pin the zipper to the jacket's front edges.


Open the zipper so it is now in two pieces.



Most sewing machines have a special zipper foot. Put the zipper foot onto your machine and with a neutral thread (I used a thread close to the color of the Ecru yarn in the jacket), put the foot down and sew along the edge of the zipper's teeth making sure the jacket's edge does not come in contact with (the zipper's teeth) but is still begin sewn to the cloth part of the zipper.


In this photo I am close to the end of the zipper. As you can see the zip is very large and wider than the seam I am making. At this point I stop sewing, making certain the needle is down or through both layers I am sewing, put up the presser foot and slide the zip past the presser foot and behind to where I have already sewn. I then put the foot back down and continue sewing to the end. By doing this, it helps to keep the seam constant in size.

Here is the side view with the zip pushed back out of the way.

This is a photo of the other side of the zipper being sewn into place. It is so much easier to sew a jacket zipper than a dress zipper because the jacket zipper is designed to break into two halves, while the dress zipper isn't.


Here is the zipper sewn into place.

Technique for Frogging Stubborn Yarns

Technique for Frogging (unraveling) Stubborn Yarns.

We have all done it. Bought an expensive yarn for a special project only to find it almost impossible to unravel when you find your stitch count wrong or that you did row 3 twice...etc.

What to do?
You can salvage what you can and throw the rest away, kicking yourself the entire time for buying that yarn in the first place...
Or you can try this method.
As you can see, I have a skein of Patons Lacette yarn pictured. It is a lovely soft yarn that works up easily, but almost impossible to frog!
I've worked with other yarns like this, with a softness that is more like a cloud of fuzz, fuzz that gets caught over and under your stitches, knotting into an impossible mess when you pull to unravel it.
Here is what I do:
I began by lightly pulling at the yarn to release the stitches-mistake. As soon as I fill resistance I stop pulling. I open my scissors so I have one point and gently insert it between the problem (in this case the fuzz) and last stitch or chain. This frees the yarn so that you can go back to gently unraveling your work.


Above are several photos illustrating the process.
In this way I was able to frog the entire piece, saving almost a full skein of yarn.
This also works well with eyelash or fun fur types of yarns.

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