Thought I'd show the progress on my Noro and Araucania nature wool coat. I am going to be using two strands together with the same colour wool as a base, but mixing with several Noro Silk Blossom colours. This worked very well with my Einstein coat.
At the moment I am finishing up the bottom part of the coat - I knit in pockets, and am about finished with the knitting - just less than 1/4 left before I try something different.
I found some tips in another usually less-than-terrific magazine called Family Circle's Easy Knitting, which I will use to help the process. Last time, with my Einstein coat, I felted the whole thing after it was all sewn together. This time, I want to felt the pieces separately, and then put them together. Then I'll sew on the border (which will be a cable pattern - I have several in mind). The sleeves will be knitted, but not felted. I thought that this might be an interesting combination of felted knitting and just 'plain ole knittin'. What do you think?
Finally making use of that Noro, eh!? Looks good!
Posted by: Bel | October 23, 2005 at 11:05 PM
I have just finished an einstein coat in lopi and it turned out really well - except that it is too big. Can I felt it to make it somewhat smaller? I don't know anything about felting, but I need to make this coat smaller. Any advice?
Posted by: Beth | December 23, 2007 at 01:56 PM
Hi Beth:
Thank for commenting on my blog site. Yes you can felt the coat. The same thing happened to me when I finally finished my coat it was way too big. I just threw it into the washing machine and let whatever happen, happen.
I know now that there are things you can do to prevent edges from stretching out and the coat going crazily out of shape. Strongly basting the bottom of the coat and the button edge together as well as the neck edge would help the edges from stretching out. Also I would suggest putting the coat into a clean cloth bag (a large pillowcase would work), and tying the ends of the pillowcase very tightly to prevent the coat from getting out of the bag during the cycle.
Read some articles on felting first – the web is a good source. But basically, you need very little water in the bottom of the washing machine, along with a bit of soap suds. You can figure that it will probably take at least a full wash cycle (about 10-15 minutes), but I watched mine very closely, checking it every few minutes.
It has been several years now since I did this, and the coat still looks great, although I’m thinking of refelting it – there are some areas where it either didn’t felt properly, or it has stretched out.
Good luck. If you need any further assistance, let me know.
Esther
Posted by: Esther | December 25, 2007 at 08:10 AM
I left Esther a note on Ravelry looking for Lettuce malabrigo from her stash. OMG the shawls on this site are heavenly and too absolutely beautiful to be earthmade.
Posted by: Joyce | June 08, 2008 at 02:05 AM
I left Esther a note on Ravelry looking for Lettuce malabrigo from her stash. OMG the shawls on this site are heavenly and too absolutely beautiful to be earthmade.
Posted by: Joyce | June 08, 2008 at 02:05 AM