Sweaters by Naeem Khan
It was these gorgeous designer
sweaters that started my obsession with beaded edging! I still drool
every time I look at by these creations by Naeem
Khan. I actually went to Neiman Marcus and tried on one of his creations. Cashmere
and hand-sewn beads—the height of luxury. And boy
was all that beading heavy! Curious to see what other designers were doing, I
looked at a bunch of beaded sweaters, from Oscar de la Renta
to Armani. What they all had in common was a simple, stockinette
body, and a sprinkling of large, crystal beads sewn on by hand. Since I didn’t
have $1750 to buy a designer sweater, I researched a variety of options for
beading to decorate my own.
Michelle Obama, wearing a J-Crew beaded sweater
The Dilemma: How to Attach the Beads?
Considering that my handsewing skills are quite limited, I doubted my ability
to sew a perfect, even line of beads “scattered” about my sweater. And I was
frankly repelled by the knotted thread ends that stuck out on the surface of
many of these supposedly top-of-the-line garments! Dreading the prospect of spending a month knitting a
lovely sweater, and then ruining it with a “crafty”-looking sprinkling of
beads, I opted for a fool-proof option—beaded lace.
Beaded Lace: Color Matching is Critical
The fantastic thing about beaded
lace is that all the work has been done for me. The beads have been glued into
a geometrical design permanently fixed in place by the lace backing. By
choosing a diaphanous lace in a color so close to my yarn that melted into the
fabric of my knitted sweater, I could make the backing almost invisible. In
this way, at a normal distance, the viewer’s eyes are drawn only to the beaded
sequence adorning the collar and cuffs!
How to Attach Beaded
Lace?
Pre-planning
is important here. It is simple enough to “whip-stitch” your beaded lace onto
the fabric of your finished garment, but what thread are you going to use?
Since I was determined to avoid a “handmade look” as much as possible for my
beaded edging, I factored my finishing technique into my initial yarn choice
before I even started the project.
1. Firstly, I chose a fuzzy yarn,
because that texture is more forgiving than a smooth fabric, which shows all
the imperfections.
2.
Secondly, I made the yarn I would
use to whip stitch the beaded edging an integral part of my sweater fabric. I chose a two-yarn approach to my sweater, blending Rowan’s Calmer yarn with Rowan’s Kidsilk Haze. Since Kidsilk Haze is an extremely fine yarn, I was able to use it to whip-stitch my beaded edging onto the collar and cuffs,
ensuring a uniform “fuzzy” texture that made the foreign lace fabric blend
seamlessly at the edges into the texture of the rest of the sweater.
3.
Practice first. Lace is
a fragile material, and doesn’t like to be punctured with a needle. Add to that
the weight of the beads it is carrying, and you have a tricky prospect to sew
the lace without ripping it! By adding a beaded lace edging to my cuffs, I
was able to practice my whip-stitching along the edge
in a less visible place—the underside of the wrist—than the collar
of my sweater. It was a good thing I did this, because when I tried to take out
a few stitches and shift the lace, it tore, but since I had made this mistake
on the underside of the wrist, I could patch it up (in my color-matched kidsilk haze) so that no one would be the wiser. Imagine if
this had happened at the focal point of the collar, where it would have ruined
the entire sweater! Let me tell you, once you sew this stuff on with a fuzzy
thread like Kidsilk Haze, it is glued in place! So use a
lot of pins to make sure it is exactly where you want it to be, because you may not have a second chance!
Also, remember, since the lace is fragile, you must make
sure that it matches the fabric of your sweater and the thread you are using,
so you can make an invisible patch as needed. Imagine if I had used red lace on
a black background—any tears would be glaringly
obvious.
How to Position the Beaded Lace
It’s the tiny details
that make all the difference when finishing a garment. One of the finishing
techniques that impressed me about the designer beaded sweaters was the placement of the beads at the collar. None of the sweaters had a plain stockinette edge. Think about this—putting
irregularly shaped items, like beads, along a regular edge, shows off even the
tiniest asymmetry. Many of the designer sweaters I admired had a tiny
machine-knitted ribbed edge. This textured pattern created a fantastic backdrop
for the beads and distracted the eye from any potential irregularity in the
placement of the beads.
Inspired
by this example, I spent a great deal of time working on the finishing of the
collar of my sweater. I made a deep V, and then experimented with different
kinds of ribbing to create the perfect backdrop for my beaded ribbon. In the
end, I settled for knitting only 3 rows of ribbing on needles two sizes
smaller. At my stitch gage, what that created was a ribbed finish exactly
double the width of my beaded ribbon. I set the ribbon in so that the beaded
width was flush with my picked-up stitches, and the other half of the ribbing
was exposed at the edge. When I cast off my ribbing, I used a special
technique, which forms a flat “chain.” See the article, “Knitting
a Perfect Rib” by Montse Stanley for the instructions
for the two-row cast off technique. You can find that article in the Threads
book, “Hand-Knitting Techniques.” It is out of print, but you can get it on amazon.
As
a result of this planning, the edge of the sweater features a chain-texture in
the same color as the lace beading, and exactly the same width. These two
textured pieces seem to be part of each other, creating the illusion that the
ribbing and beading have blended together into a one-piece finish for the
collar. It is the similarity in width, color, and texture that creates this
effect, but it is just different enough to create an added dimension to the finished collar.
Well,
it is a relief to have seen this complicated project through to the end at
last! Between the new techniques I used for top-down knitting, beaded edging,
and picking up and knitting the sleeves from the top down, there were moments
when I thought I would never be able to make it work! Phew! Now I’m off to
unravel the bottom and make it a few inches longer. Then I will FINALLY be
done!