The Crisis Averted Scarf

Having made the Blanket Coat with the black and white wool bouclé, I found I had enough scraps to make myself another scarf. I went through my list of creative scarf ideas, and settled on edging it with bright pink pompoms. I measured, cut, pinned the pompom trim around the edge, realised there wouldn’t be quite enough, trimmed the scarf to make it narrower, repinned and started sewing the trim on. All was going well.

Or so I thought…

I got towards the end of the last edge, and this is what happened:

Disaster! Something of a miscalculation…

Somehow, I’d been sewing more tightly than I’d pinned. By this stage it was around 2am. What I should have done, is put it away and think about it in the morning. Unfortunately, precisely because it was 2am, I failed to make that sensible decision. Instead my 2am brain made a decision that in order to fix this, I would add a felt flower appliqué. However, I didn’t have any bright pink felt, which is what my 2am plan required. So I went straight onto Ebay and found some felt.

Of course  I could just have unpicked it, and made the scarf a bit narrower. But it was 2am.

Of course I could just have ordered more pompom trim. That thought didn’t occur to me at 2am. Although, at 2.30am, after having ordered the felt, that’s when it occurred to me.

Anyway, the felt arrived a few days later. I’d ordered some pink and some black, so that I’d have Options. In the end, it had to be the pink. I was going up to London yesterday evening, so I thought I could do the appliqué on the train. Unfortunately, because of Storm Doris, the trains were all delayed and cancelled, so I was standing up all the way to London, so there was no chance of sewing then. On the way home, I had a seat with a fold-down table, so I was all set to go.

I cut out a big Mary Quant style flower, in two layers. I added some stamens with French Knots on both layers, then put one layer on each side of the scarf, back to back, making sure I matched the two layers correctly, and that I fully covered the pompom gap. A careful running stitch joined the two layers and attached the appliqués to the scarf, and voilà!

A massive flower – always a favourite

So all is now well and I have another scarf to add to my collection of me-made accessories.

Not a Mistake – a Design Feature!

The Rainbow Scarf is finished

I finished the embroidered scarf last night.

It’s looking quite subtle, isn’t it?

One of the things I really love about sewing is that sometimes I’m creating something that’s only ever been in my head before. That’s what this project was like. I’m not saying that I’m the only person who’s ever done a running stitch scarf, because I’d already seen a couple of scarves that were an inspiration towards this one, but this particular scarf came out of my own head, inspired by the materials I had available.

It was a scrapbuster. I had about 50cm of black cotton jersey left over after my first #sewdots dress, and I’d bought some dirt cheap embroidery silks, from Ebay. I mean cheap – I think they cost under £4 for 20 colours.  They weren’t a brand I’ve ever heard of, but they were nice bright colours and it’s always handy to have some embroidery floss to hand, I reckon. So I had a full set of 20 colours, and I arranged them (or rather most of them) into a sort of spectrum.

My chosen technique was to cut the 50cms of jersey into two pieces of 25cm which was now the width of the scarf. The jersey was a good 150cm wide, so that was the length of my scarf. I put the two layers back to back, and starting in the middle, I drew a line along the length of my scarf with my tailor’s chalk wheel. The plan was to do a running stitch along the line, trying to stick to 5mm length stitches. I tried the old embroiderer’s trick of marking the stitch length on my thumb. It kinda sorta worked!

I was using a totally plain running stitch. Having done one line, I then used that to draw the next line, parallel to it, 5mm away. I used my Janome clear ruler, which made the process very easy.

I was being vaguely influenced by the Sashiko embroidery I’ve seen on my Instagram feed. However, I wouldn’t presume to use the term “Sashiko” for what I’ve done! Mine doesn’t have that beautiful symmetry and perfection. I’ll be honest, my stitching was very far from being precise! But I kept going, and it was pretty much parallel, and I managed to get the same number of stitches in each line. It was a long job, but it wasn’t complicated. It was the sort of work I could do while watching tv of an evening.

I’ve left the sides with about 2.5cm of no embroidery. I haven’t hemmed the sides, I’m leaving the jersey to curl naturally, I didn’t want to put knots into this, so I left the thread ends loose at each end, to act as a fringe.

And this is how it’s ended up…

It turned out quite colourful!

But I have to say it was not an easy process. Firstly there was the issue of having to thread my needle with a piece of embroidery floss of at least 180cm. My grandmother (and my maiden aunt, Tante Madeleine, who taught me embroidery) always insisted that you should sew with short threads, anything longer than about 30cms was an “aiguillée de paresseuse” – a lazy girl’s needleful. And they instilled this wisdom in me for a very good reason – sewing with long threads is a flipping nightmare! It twists and knots like nobody’s business.

And secondly, the embroidery floss I was using was really low quality. It had been dirt cheap for a reason. It was very “splitty”, and to make matters even worse, some of the colours only had five strands, instead of the usual six. The red only had four. If anyone reading this is moved to try embroidery, my advice is definitely, pay for the good stuff!

To end on a more positive note, I know I’ve complained about the embroidery floss I was using, but it does have a lovely shiny quality, which I think makes it really pretty.

I’m very happy with how it’s turned out.