entrelac

[dragonlady7]

Got home yesterday to find a package crammed between storm and kitchen door. I opened it to discover that my mother had knit me a shawl! Uncharacteristically for her, she had actually included a note: apparently, she had hesitated to make me a shawl because one of my sisters had bought me a cardigan for Christmas?? What?? but had been unable to resist trying out a new technique. Apparently it's called "entrelac" and it looks quite complicated. "Forgive the errors," she signed off breezily.


What errors???
Chita approves.
Unusually, she also did not append the yarn label with washing instructions, so I don't know whether I need to hand-wash this. I might anyway!!

(To any who don't know me well, I sew and embroider and have just learned how to spin, and I do hand-lettering and signpainting as well, but I do not know how to knit or crochet, it is sorcery and also off-limits to me because I have Too Much Crafting Shit in my house. Also my mother and two of my sisters and my best friend and my mother-not-in-law and my sister-not-in-law all do yarncrafts, and so I own more hand-knitted belongings of exquisite beauty than I do stuff I've sewn, despite that being the thing I do.)

In other news I've decided to make a quilt-as-you-go lap quilt to go on the couch made out of all my hoarded discarded pajamas, with the flannels on the outside and the fleeces as batting, and it's probably going to be hideous as shit but unlike sorcery yarncraft, sewing still functions as the intended thing and is approximately the right size and structural integrity even if you fuck it up ridiculously.
I've started off with, uh, eleven-inch squares, because that was what the fleece pajama pants I was cutting up went neatly into? So I'll just be... trying to make that a thing. I don't know what size a lap quilt is supposed to be. I feel like 44" is a good start. If I have 16 11" squares, I get a 44" square, right? And then if I want to make it a rectangle I just add uhhh four more on the end and that's 20 squares? Maybe?
Shit, I don't know how to make that math problem work. Some of this shit I can do in my head, some shit I can't do full-stop even with a textbook and someone holding my hand, and I just don't know which category a math thing is going to fall into until I stop and think about it.

Well, I have eight squares, so I'll just start with those and make them and then see what they look like and how many more I need.
I would like to make the flannel scraps into a pattern but I think I'm gonna just. Not. In the interests of fucking finishing this thing, ever.

Comments

[unicornduke]

It looks incredible and Chita looks magnificent and it's most likely hand wash only lol

also quilting in patterns is top level sewing sorcery and Not To Be Trusted

[krait]

It's beautiful! Chita's approval is 100% merited. :)

I do not know how to knit or crochet, it is sorcery and also off-limits to me

This is how it is with me, too! I do All The Crafts That Don't Involve Yarn, and that's enough.

[wyomingnot]

Don't forget seam allowances on that quilt. :)

entrelac is cool and complicated-looking, but once you've got the hang of it, it's not that hard and is actually kinda fun. but you gotta trust your pattern. not that that matters for you, since you're not a sorceress yarncrafter.

[dragonlady7]

Well, I'm figuring that the seam allowances are accounted for in the fudge factor where I figure that it doesn't actually matter what size this thing ends up as long as it's roughly big enough to lie down under, so.

Entrelac is like fake basket-weave and I dig the shit out of it.

[sabotabby]

That is a sweet shawl. And Chita is a gorgeous cat. Is she soft? She looks extra soft.

[dragonlady7]

My girl is so soft. Which is good, as she likes to sleep on my face.

[harpers_child]

Those colors are super pretty and! seasonally appropriate as it's currently Mardi Gras. (purple/green/gold is the color of the season.)

Also? Your face is a great face.

[dragonlady7]

Aw! Thanks!
It is currently-appropriate colors, you're right! I'll have to make an outfit around it.

[mosylu]

Oooo that is beautiful work! Your mom did good.

Adding my voice to the other that said it is most likely hand-wash only, at least if it's wool or a wool blend. Entrelac (which is a fun technique!) kind of scrunches up unless it's blocked properly (<-----knitting sorcery periphery skill) and wool usually needs to be blocked every time it's washed, or at least laid out very flat.

Luckily, unless you're doing farm work in the shawl, it won't need to be washed often. :D

[dragonlady7]

Yes, I find I have to reshape some of the garments my mother makes me if I wash them. I don't wash them often and you're right, don't need to-- it's outerwear and as long as I don't do anything filthy in said outerwear, I'm good.

Of all her daughters, I'm astonishingly the one who'll hand-wash things most reliably...

[paean]

When I quilt, sometimes I just have to draw the thing out, ideally on graphing paper, but sometimes just on a scrap of anything. Somehow that always anchors the math for me. And I still don’t always get it right even with all that. But if you just make a lot of squares of the same size, it tends to work out. My biggest failures have been fancy squares of different patterns that I could have sworn would be the same size, but ended up too different to cheat together.

[dragonlady7]

That last thing, that's gonna be what happens to me. But I figure, well, it's a use-up-rags quilt. So I'll just channel the Gees Bend aesthetic and make something happen.
So far not even that is working-- on my all-white-scraps crumb quilt, I didn't make them be squares, I just kept piecing all into one thing, and I'm gonna have to take it back apart because somehow the bloody thing didn't end up flat. I'd better make them at least attempt to be squares. But I don't want it to be tidy and I don't want you to be able to see where the squares went together-- I really want it to just all actually be scraps. I'm going to back the scraps with a lining of big pieces of fabric, I just want the whole quilt top to be tiny bits, not tiny bits arranged neatly into squares. And now I see why I haven't ever really seen a quilt like that. It's hard as hell, especially when you're working with offcuts from sewing garments so they're not naturally in straight lines.

Everyone I know who quilts, even my slapdash-aesthetic mother, does everything in straight lines and presses it flat between every step and makes it perfect, and I have seen quilts that don't look like that, in museums, but the art of how to make a quilt without constantly ironing and without using brand-new purchased materials for every step seems to be lost.
But I have a crazy quilt dated 1888 in my attic, which my uncle gave me, which is too fragile to use or even really display, and it's all pieced, the back is pieced, the batting is pieced, and I want to do that. But any tutorials I find are all about cutting up new fabric and making it look like salvage. !!! Argh.

[paean]

Here’s the thing about crazy quilts. They were all the rage in the 1880s. And many of them were made from a kit that came with all sorts of little cuts of different fabrics. The ones that were home generated took years to decades of saving a single piece of new fabric from other sewing projects, and trading with friends for more scraps. But they weren’t made of recycled fabric. The amount of work to make that kind of quilting masterpiece was recognized even by our thrifty ancestors.

Recycling fabric is great if you want to made a small quilt. But once we live in fabric, it’s no longer flat. Even doing all your piecing one a giant table will not rectify that. My advice is to take fabric only from the least stressed areas (mid thigh and lower calf for pants) and discarding anything within an inch of any seam. Even with this, your going to struggle. Very loose garments like nightgowns might be an exception, but you are better off cutting across and incorporating any seams than ripping them. And if the fabric is worn, you have to back it to make it stay flat before piecing. I know it’s not what you want to hear. But a quilt like you are describing could take a couple of hundred hours of work, and deserves to last more than worn out fabric will give it.

Now if you want a use for all your old flannel PJs and other older fabric, make giant shapes and do quilted curtains for the yurt. It uses up some of your stash, and for curtains, flat is less critical. And you can overlap the “squares” to take up any odd bends of the fabric.

Sorry to be discouraging. But your labor and success is valuable. I just don’t want you to go down the road I’ve been on. Quilting and clothes making are very different skills. I don’t do much of either right now, but I much prefer figuring out how to make flat fabric (or remake from another garment) a tailored shaped costume than try to make already bent fabric hold a flat shape.

[dragonlady7]

I figured heavily-worn fabric isn't going to do the trick, it won't hold up, though I have picked up that I need to back some stuff to get it to work. I'm also working on small things, I'm not doing a huge bed-sized coverlet. But I have been collecting some fabrics in a particular color scheme, and figure I'll try to make a semi-crazy quilt out of that-- I have a collection of corduroys, velvets, and silks in black and burgundy colorways, so I'll probably try to make a more systematically-pieced pattern out of those and then do more of a crazy quilt like with the decorative stitching and such, and probably aim for, like... a pillow sham case.

But yes, the flannel is going to be unconcerned with appearances and devoted to yurt hangings or possibly crappy lap quilts to use until they fall apart.

[paean]

That makes so much more sense. I don’t know how I got the flannel and the crazy quilt all conflated in my mind.

[dragonlady7]

Well, because I've been talking about them all muddled-up this whole time, because I haven't been terribly clear about what I'm working on. I'm pretty disorganized, mentally.

I also really want to make myself a quilted vest that's made of salvaged fabric, and obviously so, but I've held off trying it. I have a vague idea of making a muslin and then using that muslin for a lining, but I have to just-- find something I can use for a muslin first, and it's too many steps.

[paean]

If you have any nonstretchy shirts or jackets (or even the top of a dress), it’s often easy to cut that down into a vest. Bonus if it saves you having to do princess seams or other curved fitting work in the front. I like your idea of using the muslin as lining. You could even just basically appliqué the whole design right to the vest, saving a lot of frustration trying to line up the muslin with your piecework.

[dragonlady7]

Oh that's a good idea. But most of the garments I own that I've discarded, I've done so because they're too small, so I already would have to alter them to be larger, especially if I'm adding quilting and padding.
But I do like the idea of just applique-ing on the outermost layer. It would be a little tricky to get the batting layer in that way, though. Not impossible, I just don't think I'm going to find a tutorial to do it that way.