Fiber Monday - Learning new things

I realize that I seem to have a penchant for choosing things that are somewhat labor intensive. You have probably already figured this out. Why buy something at the store when you can spend a million hours making it yourself? Which is why my newest craft to learn is English paper piecing. Here was my first trial run to see if I enjoyed the process. 


I chose the colors pretty much at random from the bags of scraps I have. This will probably become nothing because I'm not overly fond of it design-wise, but I love the possibilities. It also didn't as long as I thought it might. 

For those unfamiliar with the process, you begin with little paper hexagons such as you see in the top of the photo. Fabric is them wrapped around them and basted in place. The hexagon pieces are then sewn together. 


When the project is sewn together, the papers are then removed and can be used again. This whole process was made a lot simpler because of the cool template I had. W. and MC have a 3D printer and made me these. You can see I used the smallest one. They are very cool. 



I enjoyed the process enough that I turn cut out a few pieces of fabric to baste around the papers. What I am looking forward to most is playing with all those little hexagons to figure out the best way to put them together. 


I'm also still working on learning double weave. It's not going terribly fast because I have to figure out each new way to do it. This week I learned how to weave fabric attached along one side, but open on the other. If the whole warp was woven in this fashion, when it came off the loom it would open up to be double the width. 

Here is the side that is open, 


and here is the other side. You can see that both the top and the bottom are attached. 


I also have a finished project to share. The Baa-ble hat is off the needles!


It still needs to have all the ends woven in and it needs to be blocked, so it's not completely finished, but close enough. 

My next project is one you can make as well. During WWII, Norwegians knit a red hat that was a visual symbol of protest over Nazi occupation. The Nazis eventually banned its use. Whatever Nazis don't like has to be a good thing, right? A yarn store in Minneapolis is selling the pattern for the hat for $5 with all proceeds going to agencies supporting immigrants. Get the pattern, support Minneapolis, reclaim the color red, and show your resistance against Nazis, both historical and current. 


You can purchase the pattern for the "Melt the ICE" hat from Needle and Skein. 

Happy knitting and resisting!

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