Thursday, February 12, 2009

Argh spew bumblefrock.

Not really. It's just that sewing up a picot hem is completely eluding me. Most of this knitting and sewing was done weeks ago — just haven't been able to bear to blog about it, or try again!, until now.

ADVICE WELCOME.

The Briar Rose is a sweet, sweet little pullover and the little girl it's destined for is very deserving. But the only way I've done picot hems before was with a provisional cast-on, knitting two together when I formed the hem and continuing up from there. This pattern has you knit from a regular cast-on and sew up the hem later. I didn't think that sounded too bad. But I should have tried it before I knit so much of the garment — because I'd have to start all over to do it differently!

So first I just tried to sew up the hem. It took about 1 second to realize it wasn't a good idea to use the body yarn, Magic Buttons, which has little lumps all through it :-) I didn't have any sock yarn in purple — not really a humongous fan of purple, I know that's sacrilege — so I took the closest I had, some Sundara in Lenten Rose. It turns out to be way different, kind of a pinky silver-grey, but oh well — it shouldn't show.

Hemming FAIL. I had no idea how to match up the rows of perl stitches on the back with the cast-on so the picots stayed aligned, and after only a few stitches they were out of sync. So instead of saw-teeth, they just looked like a blur.

Idea! I'll sew a running stitch in and out of the body, going around each stitch. I can see the two-stitches-per-tooth on the picots easily, so this should help me keep the count on the body part I'm trying to sew to. I used bright turquoise yarn:

It turned out to be challenging to see to 'gozinta' and 'gozouta's of the running stitch on the back...

but I plunged ahead:


And from the back it looked pretty good:

But from the front, as you can maybe see at the right side here, I was lapsing into blurry picots again. Somehow I'd gotten off count.

I'm going crazy. Is there a better way? I really do want to finish this pullover!

4 comments:

sheep#100 said...

I suppose you could try foling the hem then pressing it lightly with a steam iron and then pinning it in place and sewing it - handsewing or machine - with a matching thread. Maybe?

Earin Marybird said...

Picot hems are on my "need to learn list". I have no help to give but lots of "Good Luck's!"

Anonymous said...

I know nothing about picot or hems and certainly nothing about picot AND hemming. all the best to ya though.

twistle said...

oof!

pins? pick a stitch line between picots and make sure you have the pin in a straight line through it front and back and that the picots look right, before you start to sew?

(as in pins perpendicular to the edge, running point into the garment for not shredding fingers - it is how I line up stripes on woven fabric so they don't wander)