Projects, stories, memories and myths of knitting and crafts

Saturday 20 March 2010

kelmscott and a new blocking board

Today has been a productive day. The Aeolian Shawl has been lurking into the background singing a siren song for me to knit it for days now. It has taken all my willpower to resist it but I did and have managed to finish the collar for kelmscott first. Now the pieces need to be blocked.

This brought another dilemma as I have been without a blocking board for many years and all kinds of inventive methods have been used to block garments. Living in a tiny house, means I constantly have to think about storage and packing things away.

So earlier this month, I bought some children's foam floor tiles to use as a blocking board because they can be taken apart to stack away easily.


This meant that I now needed a cover that can be removed easily too. I placed two tiles on some wadding (or batting as I know it) and cut out around them.


Then I placed them on some Gingham fabric and cut around them, allowing for a large fold over, about 18 squares on each side.


Once this was done, I folded the fabric into four so that all the corners were together.  I used a side plate to round the corners.


I drew a line along the edge of the plate.


Then I cut this out.


I turned over a hem of about 1.5cm all the way around the edge of the fabric leaving a gap of about 2cm between the stitching lines so that there was an opening to thread the string through. Using a safety pin, I threaded string through the hem to make a drawstring around the edge of the fabric.


I placed the gingham flat on the table with the wrong side facing upwards. Then I placed the wadding on top of it and  the foam tiles on top of that.


I drew the stings in so that the overlap of fabric came to the back of the tiles and gathered it evenly around before I secured the strings with a bow which can be undone to undo it. Turning the completed board over it looked like this. Ready to have some knitting blocked on it!


Out came kelmscott and it was duly blocked on the new blocking board which worked a treat. 


 The collar with the back above it.


The best part of this is that I also managed to answer Aeolian's siren call too and knitted about 30 rows. It is a lovely knit too but that is story for another time!

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