Dec Roses Scarf Tutorial

Winter means a lot of accessories, and among all those...scarves is my favorite. They can perk up any plain outfit, come in bazzillion styles and colors and are so easy to make. And if something is easy to make, I have to make it. So I did. This super soft bunch of ruffles. I love it and I thought you would like it too so I'm sharing with you how to make one.


Supplies:

Knit Jersey Fabric : 15 inches ( length) x 60 inches ( width)
Elastic thread
Matching thread


Construction:

1. Cut two strips from the fabric of 7.5 inches X 60 inches. If your fabric is not 60 inches wide than just cut multiple strips to make that length. Don't worry about cutting the strips evenly, since it will all get ruffled eventually a little variation in width won't be noticeable and most probably look good.

2.

Now take one strip and shir it in the center. To do this you need to fill your bobbin with elastic thread and use the regular matching thread on top. I did two rows but since all the fabrics shir differently you will need to vary the number of rows based on when you get a decent ruffle in the fabric. If you don't have any experience with shirring here's an excellent shirring tutorial to jumpstart you.

If you cut two smaller strips instead of a 60 inch wide single you need to join them before you shir. The good news is that you don't need to do anything special for that. Just overlap the two strips 1 inch and continue shirring like it was a continuous piece. Because the final piece would be very ruffled, the join would be invisible. Since the knits don't fray, it would be okay in the wash too.

3.

Repeat the above step for both the strips.

4.

Now place one strip over the other ( Wrong sides together). The wrong side is where the white elastic thread is showing. Our goal is to hide this thread, so it doesn't show up whatever way you wear your scarf.

5.

Sew a seam of half inch at the starting point ( shown by the arrow), go back and forth 2-3 times. Trim the extra thread.

6.

Sew a half inch seam every 5 inches. Go back and forth like you did in step 5. Trim any excess thread. What these small 'tacks' do is hold the two layers together so the elastic thread won't show. But sewing these only at the intervals would maintain the stretch in the scarf that was given to it by shirring.
7.

Sometimes, due to unpredictable nature of shirring, your strips may turn out to be different lengths. If that happens, just turn the extra part from the longer strip over the smaller ( As I did in the image above - look right above the arrow) and sew a tack at this point.

8.

The scarf is ready! wear it, gift it, show it off!

Variations:

You could do a number of things with this basic idea. Here're a couple that I could think of.

1. Use strips of different widths

2. Cut fringes after shirring

3. Use different colors for both the strips

4. Use 4 strips instead of 2 and shir 2 layers together.

5. Join different colored small strips instead of making a single long one


I may try some of these ideas myself at some point...but for now, ball is in your court. Go wild!

Roses in December Ruffled Scarf

So we were packing for this upcoming trip and I thought it will be cool to have some accessories for myself. I had a half-baked idea of a shirred scarf in my head and a just perfect jersey fabric at hand but there were still a few kinks that I couldn't think of a way to get around..that is..until now.
Once I thought through the design and felt confident, I left the piles of clothes to be packed on the bed, handed the munchkin her favorite toy, and got to work ( sounds familiar...eh).
It was an easy-peasy scarf and if I weren't interrupted by my bunny who now wants to "Sew clothes" it would take me about 20 mins...I think.
The scarf is super soft and very ruffley...just the way I wanted. I wore it to work and what to do you know...I even got compliments :). My colleague told me the scarf looked very nice, she even asked me where I bought it. I tried my best not to look smug when I told her "I made it"...lol.
Incidents like these totally make my day...and ohh..almost forgot.. the tutorial is in the works and will be here very soon.

December sewing - pint sized accessories

So I finally realized that its December already and whats winter without some ( a lot of ) accessories. I stumbled upon this superb tutorial from "From An Igloo" and just had to make it. The pattern is so good and it came together so easily that I made more ( for gifts).
If you're looking for a hat pattern, look no more. Make these...pronto...ok!

I finally succumbed to the bunting trend that has been over the blogosphere for a while now ( Is it too late already? No. Don't answer that question). I made some kiddie scarflets and used bunting appliques to decorate these.

The best part - Kiddo loves them. She keeps saying "Mama I'm dinosaur...lol"

Embellish your scarf

I embellished my scarf in two ways and I'll show you both here:

1. Narrow satin ribbon embrodiery

This is a very easy embellishment. Just thread some narrow satin ribbon through the eye of an upholstery needle ( Mine was 1/8 inches wide)

Now tie a knot at one end of the ribbon. Turn your tubular scarf inside out and sew running stitches across the length of the scaf ( or in whatever fashion you want). The benefit of having loose weave fabric is that pulling ribbon through the fabric will be effortless.

Once you embroider the length you wanted tie another knot in the ribbon and cut it after the knot.
See how easy. Now make some more lines in some more colors. I wanted my scarf to be pastel but colorful. So I went with two colors. You can add more, add brighter colors etc.
Another option is to use 5-6 ply of embroidery floss, wool etc instead of ribbon, Or use narrow strips of other fabrics. As I said, possibilities are practically endless.
Now turn the scarf inside out. You're done.


2. Fabric flower strip:

See the flower strip at the bottom! Here's how I made it.
Cut 2 inches wide strips of the same fabric as the scarf.

Join all these together to make a long strip. Serge on all four sides. If you don't have a serger, you can sew on a bias tape, make a 2 inch wide tube instead of strip or you can just turn the sides.

Now roll this strip in the form of flower from one end, and hand sew on the scarf where we joined the two pieces to the main scarf body.

Now twist the strip into another flower right next to the first one. Hand sew this one down too

There is really no right or wrong way to do it. Just twist the strip in a way that appears pleasing to your eyes and sew it. Keep doing this until you cover the complete width of the scarf. Now you have a flower vine across your scarf. Cut the remaining strip and tuck the end beneath the closest flower petals. Secure it with a stitch or two. You're done with one end. Repeat the same with another end.

You might have noticed that this will also hide the serged line that was appearing because of joining two extra pieces to the main body of scarf, but honestly, there're many far easier way to hide it. You could sew on a ribbon, bias tape or just leave as is. On my fabric, those serged edges were not looking bad at all, but I just wanted to ave some flowers on this scarf, thats why I embellished it like this.

Tutorial: Make it for Mom: Loose knit Summer Scarf

So my mom lives too far for me to make anything for her, and also she doesn't wear scarves in summer.
But I thought you guys might like to make one for your mom on mother's day. So here's a tutorial for an easy breezy summer scarf.
What I love about scarves is that they are the perfect gift for most people and they are a very open-ended project. You can make one regardless of what skill level you're at. They are very forgiving in the sense that a couple of stitches here and there wouldn't make a big difference. The embellishment possibilities are practically endless and you can use so many different types of fabrics, which will give so many different results but will still look good.
So here's my tutorial for Summer Scarf made with a loose weave fabric. I have used this jute fabric to make it, but you can use pretty much any fabric which is loosely woven.


Supplies: For scarf body
               Loosely woven fabric : 41 inches X 36 inches
               Emboridery Floss in a matching or contrast color: 1 skein
               For embellishment
               Narrow Satin Ribboon : 3-4 yards
               or
               Embroidery Floss in contrasting colors
               Upholstery needle. Or any needle with a big eye to thread satin ribbon through.
 
Now lets make our scarf:

Cut two pieces from fabric. Length 41 X Width 15 inches.
Cut two more pieces. Length 7.5 inches X width 15 inches.

Now sew the two bigger pieces ( right sides together) at their smaller (width) sides. Here's what you will
have at this point

Now serge the two smaller pieces at their 15 inch end ( only one side) and sew them on the main fabric at the ends. The serged side should be on top, and the raw end should line up with the raw end of main fabric.

If you don't have a serger you can just sew it on and secure it with a zigzag stitch so it wont fray.

Now pick out one or two threads from the upper fabric width about 2 inches from one end. Do the same at the other end. You would see a narrow alley on the fabric like this. Its kind of difficult to notice in this picture,
but if you look really hard you will see a sort of line going diagonally from near top left to bottom right.

Now use this narrow line as a guide and hand sew a stitch like this.

Keep in mind that even though you have picked out the thread from only the top fabric you have to take both layers of fabric when you sew these stitches. This will help us make dense tassles at both ends of scarf.

Once you have stitched across the width, pickout the threads from the end of the fabric from upto this stitch.
Like this:

pick out the threads from both the layers of the fabric.

When you pick out the threads from the inner layer you may notice that some of the threads go beyond the hand-stitched line. Thats because you picked out only the thread from first layer so only on that layer hand-stitching is aligned on the grain. But don't worry it doesn't matter. Just pick out all the threads even if they end up crossing the hand-stitching. Now you'll have nice and dense tassels at the ends of scarf.

Now you can fold the scarf half lengthwise with right sides together, sew across the length to make a tube and turn it out. Your scarf main body is finished now.

You can wear/gift it as is or you can embellish it. I'll talk about some embellishment options in my next post.