Author: Lyn Leventhall

This started with the AGM – the usual reports and re-election of the committee.  One new committee member was elected as the longest serving member is moving away.

This was followed by a club evening.

 

Advanced Use of the Ribber

This month the topic was “advanced use of the ribber”,  April, Margaret and Frances demonstrated various techniques:
Double Jacquard – this technique creates a fairisle like fabric with no floats knitting all needles on both beds. To create this, it helps to use a double bed colour changer on the Brother Machines or the general purpose colour changer on Knitmaster machines.
It is important to follow the colour changer instructions closely, as you must start from the correct side to sequence the colours correctly.

 

 

Racking stitches on the ribber bed to give a zigzag pattern on the purl side of the fabric, and hand transferred lace holes round a diamond shaped block were created by transferring stitches between the ribber and the main bed.

The blue samples were machine knit quilted fabric, this used the ribber with patterning, either punchcard or electronic to create “pockets” which were stuffed with polyester toy stuffing, Depending on the punchcard used a variety of designs can be knitted, it is important that the designs have solid areas for patterning. Margaret also demonstrated the Brother ribber transfer carriage.

After the initial talks, everyone was encouraged to watch the demos in groups and try out the techniques for themselves.

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Rectangles were this month’s theme.  Anu started us off with some ideas she had used for garments – a lovely  hat in a subtle grey and purple fair-isle, all  mode with rectangles and using a drawstring to create the crown, then a stripey poncho which was widely admired.

A list of related websites:

[simple-links category-“anu-links” orderby=”title” order=”ASC” title=”Links to Rectangle Ideas” category=”31″ show_image=”true” image_size=”medium” description=”true” remove_line_break=”true”]

 

She then covered some ideas for bags found online – a windmill pattern and a Masa bag plus some others created specially.  Margaret had tried some of these ideas and showed us the results which were very intricate looking but simply made from rectangles folded in clever origami ways to make 3-D shapes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Various other members had brought along garments and other items made up from rectangular pieces.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anthea showed us two jumpers she had made from strips of rectangular fair-isle together with some very thin strips to give a rolled effect to decorate the seams. These had been well used over a number of years as they were warm and cosy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After coffee, we had great fun getting into groups and trying to construct garments and other items from some rectangular pieces that members had brought along.

It was a very creative evening and we all enjoyed ourselves.

Here are all the ideas we came up with – we used pegs and pins to fix the garments together – just to give an idea of what is possitle.

Show and tell

Items were brought along for the show and tell from Barbara who had made several pairs of pretty baby bootees and a baby cardigan.  Gill R brought a pretty hat and Gillian made a Fiddle Muff for our charity collection – more of that next time.  Also see link to apattern for  a chunky machine on the home page.

Show and tell – Barbara’s booties, #1	Show and tell – Barbara’s booties, #2

 

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