THE CLUB CHALLENGE We discussed various ideas for our yearly club challenge and finally agreed that we would take a garment and UPSCALE IT. The idea would be to take a knitted garment that you no longer wear and change into something more wearable and attractive. You would have to photograph it as the BEFORE GARMENT and then work on it over the next few months. We would look at our projects at our February meeting. If you can’t bear to cut up your own garment, you can purchase something at a charity shop. Some ideas mentioned were turning a sweater into a cardigan, changing the neckline on a garment using cut and sew, felting a garment to make into something else, and adding surface direction to change the look of a garment.  We plan to see the results at our February meeting when we also have our bring and buy of yarn and other things to help with the hire fee for the hall. 

Although we looked at ways to produce plaid fabrics without using a Fair Isle pattern, we also discussed our program for the coming year.  We will be hosting Fiona Morris at our November 13th meeting.  She will be  talking to us on Surface Decoration.  This covers painting on knitted fabric, embroidery, applique, sewing on beads etc. and needle felting onto knitted fabric include the work leading up to a large wall hanging piece that was made for the exhibition John Allen curated back in 2000/2001 .  

We take a break in December.  In January, Jenny M. has promised to bring along her overlocker and demonstrate how it can be used successfully on knitted fabrics.  Some of our club members own overlockers, but haven't put them to good use. Other may be contemplating purchasing one and would like to see how they work.

Here is the close up of the 'gully' created by leaving 1 needle in non working position while knitting stripes and then embroidering the vertical lines afterward.

Here is the finished sample.  Once the knitting had been finished, a chain stitch was embroidered along the gully as a guide line.  A crochet chain can be substituted 

 The vertical stripes had one needle out of working position, the next 4 were in working position and the next needle was out of working position. Followed by 22 needles in working position and then  two needles left in non working position as before.