Any sewers here? I recently saw a picture of a scarf pieced from squares cut from salvaged sweaters. What I could not examine were the seams involved. Does anyone have any great suggestions? I do have a serger as well as a regular sewing machine. But I’ve never really worked with knit, and when I did it was fine-gauge cotton jersey.
I’d suggest serging the edges first. If it’s a scarf, you’ll want to make flat seams - and that means hand-stitching, or possibly crocheting the squares together. Or maybe, zig-zagging them with the sewing machine.
You’ll want to be especially gentle with the squares when you cut them, lest they start to ravel at the edges. Maybe pressing a line of interfacing where you intend to cut would help with that (just a posit, I’ve never tried it).
I make a lot of things out of junkstore sweaters. Mostly I just cut and sew. Sometimes I give it a zigzag selvage; sometimes I don’t. Machine-sewn knits are surprisingly stable. If the seam holds, the knit is unlikely to ravel beyond it.
I mostly make hats, so I often wash/dry/shrink/semi-felt the sweaters first; every little bit of body helps. But I’ve made patchwork sweaters, scarves, and sweater quilts. In general, the more “fluid” you want the fabric, the less you want to sew it.
Today, I took a purple-and-red merino turtleneck and turned it into a floppy hat for my toddler (regular sewing) and a scarf for MrChot (decorative 3-thread flat seam serging). It didn’t seem to make much difference either way - the knit didn’t seem inclined to unravel.
I may keep that scarf for myself. I’ll move on to cashmere when I perfect this technique, though. Found two wonderful cashmere sweaters in the thrift today for $3 each.
Yeah, fun innit? Sweater sleeves make great kids-hat-starters. I have a felters hat form that use for building more structured hats on. Comes in way handy. Plus I use it to make hats out of junkstore fur too. (Caution: where a surgical mask when dealing with old fuh. Otherwise you’ll be harking up fuzzy phlegm for days. Trust me on this one.)
I’m still running into problems:
Rib-knit stretches something awful when I run it through my sewing machine on a chain stitch, and ends up with what should be a ruffled/lettuce edge, except it’s the hem.
I still can’t figure out how this one baby blanket was made. The picture is in the current issue of Child Magazine, page 138. It very clearly is not backed with anything, but it’s been folded decorously so you can’t see the back, can’t see how the seams are done. There’s a very faint hint, bottom right corner, that they have some variety of binding on them, but I tried a cotton bias tape binding that I had on hand, with a scrap of knit, and it was worse than just serging it would have been.
I tried a ‘lapped seam’ (edges overlapped 3/8 and stitched down the middle of the overlapped area with a zigzag stitch) and it still stretched and distorted.
There may be creative things I can do with serging, but there will still be raw edges, as far as I can tell, or huge lumpy seams, or something.
Help?
You want to use the stretch stitch on your sewing machine, if it has one. You might also want to use the walking foot to prevent the botton layer from creeping. A double needle might help too, since then you’ll be doing a double line of stitching, which will lay flatter than two separate passes with a single needle. You’ll also want to use a needle made especially for knits – something with a ball point on the end. A longer stitch length will help keep it from bunching, too. Not a basting stitch, but mid-way between the standard length and the longest length. Instead of pinning, you might want to hand baste, since you’ll have more control over the fabric.
I’d probably use a French seam, if you’re dead set on sewing it together on your machine and you don’t have a stretch stitch. (For a half-inch seam allowance: Put wrong sides together, sew a quarter inch from the edge, fold so right sides are together, sew a half-inch seam. Ends neatly contained. It’s a little bulky, but nice and easy.) It leaves a wrong side that might look like it was bound. Otherwise, flatfelling could work, if you wanted to fiddle with it that much.
If you’re willing to do handwork, then I suggest slightly felting the sweaters and then crocheting the squares together. That will make a sturdy, bound edge on the seams.
I wouldn’t use cotton bias binding on knits because the two different types of fabric will fight each other when it comes to the grain of the fabric. Knits tend to stretch in every direction, while plain weaves (like bias binding) really only stretch on the bias. (Hard to believe, I know!) You’d want to use the same type of fabric, but I’ve never ever seen knitted binding sold in stores.
Since you’re looking for informed opinions, let’s move this to IMHO.
samclem GQ moderator