Fashion: Yarn Style

Tips on Yarn Combining for Runway Inspired Knits

            

 

I have now completed the second large piece of my Chanel-inspired V neck pullover, the front. It was quite a labor of love, but I do like the way it looks after blocking. Because of the mix of fair isle and slip stitch techniques, I found it necessary to block each individual column of colors with pins in order to keep them symmetrical:

You can see the pins, above, forming little indentations in the knitted fabric. Because this piece contains so many different yarns, I just kept the piece dry, pinned it, then put a wet towel on top of it to facililatate the blocking process.

 

It has been challenging to work with so many yarns at the same time. Normally, I avoid yarn combining, but I found it necessary in order to reproduce the unusual colors in this textile.

The mauve was particularly difficult to approximate, as when I used one mauve color by itself it looked to harsh and so I had to create my own color by combining several variegated yarns together. Compare the closeup of my actual knit here:

to the effect you get from using one solid mauve yarn, which you see in the top left section of the fair isle swatch:

The stark mauve, above, looks exaggerated and somehow too sweet in contrast with the grey and silver. Not the look I desired. However, I found that in order to get the water-color effect of the subtle mauve of my inspiration piece, I needed to combine 2 threads of Kidsilk spray yarn:

With one thread of Classic Elite silky alpaca lace

And one thread of Rowan shimmer

= 4 different yarns!!!!!

This means that on every other slip stitch pattern repeat, I am holding those four yarns together in one hand. And because I am creating contrasting colums of colors I must use another collection of colors in the other. This contrasting color block uses three yarns--Habu NS-28, Rowan Kidsilk Haze, and Rowan Shimmer:

This means that the knitting process is pretty slow, because every 5 stitches of the slip stitch pattern, I am trading a handful of yarns for another. But the back sides of my pieces are a gorgeous kaleidoscope of different colored yarns:

 

If I hadn’t fallen so much in love with these unique colors I doubt I would have bothered with the hassle of yarn combining. But since this textile has been haunting me, I have pushed forward with the two main body pieces and have just started my first sleeve. On the way, I have discovered some things that may be useful to others who have ventured into the tricky terrain of yarn combining.

Tip #1: Separate your balls of yarn in an open space

Keep your balls of yarn separate if you are combining several yarns of different materials and thicknesses. If you try to wind different yarns into a ball together but they have different stretch because of their different fibres, you will end up with a mess. Do not put them in a bag either. Unfortunately, balls of yarn will roll around as the strands of yarn are pulling off them, and in a constricted space like a bag they are much more likely to tangle together as that happens.I found that it is easier to keep my balls separate but next to each other on one side of me on the sofa, lying loose, or in a wide, open box. Here you can see that the yarn strands are separate but are knitted together as one:

Tip #2: When your yarns first cross over each other, pull the junction down.

In my case, when I am executing the fair isle/slip stitch portion of my textile, I have one color block comprising 3 strands of yarn and another color block comprising 4 strands of yarn. When I first switch from one block to another, my 3 strands of yarn cross over my 4 strands of yarn for the first time. At this crossing, I loosen the junction and pull it down gently.

The lower this junction is, of the strands crossing over each other, the longer your separated strands are, which means you have more time to do your stranding work before the junction creates an inevitable snarl as some of the hairs on the little threads catch each other.

Tip #3: Pause regularly to unwind your color blocks from each other.

As you knit along in alternating colors, the strands that cross will become wound around each other:

This becomes less of a problem if you defer the yarn junction as mentioned in Tip 2 by gently separating your yarns after the first crossing and pulling that junction down. But I found that if I took one color block of all its strands at once and unwound it from the others every 2 rows, then I could keep the work moving smoothly and avoid a massive tangle which is a time-consuming disaster. Once I got used to it, the yarn unwinding went quickly and prevented a lot of frustration. I found that if I held all 3 balls of yarn in my hand together as one, I could very quickly separate them  from the strands in the other color block.

Tip #4: Take frequent breaks to knit a simple project in one yarn

No matter how many tricks I have tried to use to simplify the process, I still find the process of colorwork with up to 7 strands of yarn at a time laborious. So I have been taking frequent breaks to liberate myself from the need for “yarn management” by knitting a fun accessory project in one yarn. I will be sharing some great easy accessory projects I have discovered through this in my next blog post.

 

 

Knitting Experiments in Textile Creation Inspired by Chanel

 

 

 

For anyone who missed the outrageously beautiful Fall/ Winter Haute Couture runway show by Chanel, you can still find it here:

www.chanel.com. Just go to Fashion, and click on the link for the Fall/Winter 2012 couture video.

 

I was absolutely stunned by the beauty of this collection. The color combinations, ranging from cream to pink to black and silver created an almost ethereal loveliness. And the textile art created by the woven pieces, quilted together, was breathtaking.

Recently, pink has been considered an outcast color in the fashion world. In 2010, Clinton Kelly, celebrity stylist from TLC’s What Not to Wear, wrote of pastel pink, “Sometimes it’s fine to wear pastel pink. Those times would be if, you are Molly Ringwald and it is 1985, or [if] you are an Easter Egg.” [OH NO She Didn’t by Clinton Kelly]. Perhaps times have changed, or perhaps Chanel is singlehandedly changing fashion through the rapturous handling of pink in this collection. Its edgy combination with grey and black, the outrageous beaded pieces and quilting were ravishing, leading me to see pink through rose-colored glasses again!

 

The piece that most captured my fancy from the show is the V-neck pullover, above. It is such a clever piece, with jacket-like sleeves and jacket trim, yet it is styled as a pullover. The exquisite combination of colors, between the hint of metallic sparkle and the intertwined pink and grey and mauve literally haunted my dreams until I resolved to find some way to achieve a similar piece. Considering that a couture garment by Chanel costs upwards of $30,000 from what I’ve heard, going out and purchasing the coveted sweater is impossible. My only recourse would be to knit a piece in a color scheme inspired by the original that would be my own, but carry something of the spirit of the runway.

 

The biggest impediment to my dream is the quality of the textile. Clearly, the pullover was woven. How could I create a similar blend of colors using knitting techniques? I spent some time amassing grey and white and silver and pink and mauve yarns from my stash (to my great good fortune I received birthday yarn money—thank you everyone!) and then I proceeded to swatch, and swatch, and swatch. Since I have just learned fair isle, I decided to use fair isle technique to create the columns of grey and light pink vertical stripes, and then I would experiment with other techniques to try to reproduce the effect of horizontal strips woven over the vertical bands of color.

Swatch 1

Attempt 1. Using fair isle and reverse stockinette, I tried combining the white silk yarn in my stash (Habu NS-28) with a thin thread of light pink yarn—Classic Elite silky Alpaca lace. Unfortunately, the two yarns did not mesh together. The resulting color was not an angelic light pink but a mottled pink and white mess that presented a sickly appearance. I was more fortunate in the grey yarn I chose. The Malabrigo Silky Merino, in Cape Code grey had a wonderful translucent shine with hints of pink that gave a fair resemblance to the grey in the original.

Swatch 2

Attempt 2: Rejecting the pink and white combination, I resolved to use straight pink in different shades mixed with grey. The firefly pink linen yarn is mixed with the Classic Elite silky alpaca again in light pink and mauve, and I brought in a silver thread of Rowan Shimmer to add dimension to the grey. The result reminded me exactly of those dusty rose bathrooms from 1990. I agree with Clinton Kelly here. The overwhelming pink pastel quality of this pink, combined with light grey is cloying and passée. There is nothing chic here.

Swatch 3

Attempt 3: Rejecting pink altogether for the body of the sweater, I resorted to a simple white and grey. The problem now is, where is the contrast? To spice it up, I added the Classic Elite silky alpaca again in pink and mauve for the upper section, but the contrast of the pink and mauve with the white is far too harsh. And the 1980s are calling again. Back to the drawing board.

Swatch 4

Attempt 4: This swatch was a success. I used a slip stitch pattern to create horizontal rows which give the impression of weaving over the vertical columns of grey and white. Here, the silver Shimmer yarn worked beautifully. Also, I brought in some new yarns that created a more subtle mauve color. Now I knew I was getting close!

 

My last step was to bring in a strand of light pink kidsilk haze. This gave me the angelic pale pink that I had wanted originally without any mottling, so that the base colors are now light pink and grey. Here is the actual textile I have created for the back piece:

Obviously this is not Chanel. It is simply my own version of textile art inspired by a beautiful piece I saw on the runway. Still, given the enormous limitations of knitting versus weaving fabric, I am pleased with the result.

Considering that I am using a mixture of fair isle and slip stitch techniques to create this textile, using 7 different yarns at one time, this is a laborious project. But sometimes no task is too difficult if you have the chance to follow your dreams.

 

Combine Yarns to Create A Chanel-style Fabric

 In order to create a knit that more closely approximated designer fabric, I combined three yarns together. This is because the expensive woven fabrics favored by designers like Chanel have color depth and texture that can rarely be recreated using only one yarn. My white knit jacket, above, is comprised of three yarns for the main body and a fourth yarn that was used for the trim.

For my Chanel jacket, I created color depth by combining three yarns that were similar in color, yet slightly different, and all of them had a different material composition ranging from merino to paper to silk. Since my color scheme was black and white, I chose Claudia Handpainted Yarns’ black tie 4-ply yarn in merino as my working yarn:

This variegated yarn is mostly white, with just hints of black, which was just the kind of subtlety I wanted. To add depth to this predominantly white color scheme, I brought in the Habu silk tram degummed NS-28:

This yarn has an incredible shimmer because of the pure silk, which shines through the knitted fabric and creates an impression of luxury. Also, this white is not exactly the same as the white in the black tie merino 4ply. Whereas the merino ranges from white to cream to grey, the silk is pure white, so combined together, they have more color depth as there is a subtle contrast between the two whites, which is further displayed by the contrasting grey/black splashes of color in the black tie. 

 

To give my fabric the feel of the bouclée of a classic Chanel and to deepen the color depth still further, I added a third variegated yarn which also ranges from white to grey to black and contains a symmetrical texture element of small squares of paper incorporated into the yarn, Habu yarn's N-78 B-3. Yes, this yarn is actually made of paper:

 

With these three yarn choices, I was able to simultaneously address the need for color depth and texture at the same time.  By sticking to neutral colors with subtle variations I was able to create a consistent fabric that looked more luxe. This is important, because when we look at the variations in color in most Chanel textiles, we can see the variations are perfectly symmetrical and the colors are generally muted. This is why I chose to use a simple basket weave made of knits and purls and why I kept my color variations more symmetrical by combining the two variegated yarns with a single white one that maintained a pure line of color throughout the jacket.

 

The edging ties the whole piece together. I executed the pocket and front edging borders in a double moss stitch using Schulana Mosco yarn doubled:

 

I do not believe that it is always necessary to combine multiple yarns in order to create a luxe fabric—there are some tweed yarns, for example, which are designed to create color depth. But in my case, I felt it was worth the extra time and effort to combine yarns in order to achieve exactly the fabric that I wanted, and the feeling that I was engaged in creating a kind of textile art  was the most satisfying part of the experience.

Lining a Chanel-Style Jacket

If you are knitting a knee-length coat or you want to stabilize loose knitted fabric, lining is a great option. I will be sharing some things that I have learned about lining knits that I hope will be helpful.

 

I was fortunate enough to attend Jean Frost’s Stitches class on how to line a Chanel-style jacket last year. I strongly recommend the class. Jean Frost is a great teacher, and she had so many useful tips and pieces of technical information to share! I brought in one of the sleeves from the Emerald Blocks jacket I was knitting, and it took the entire two day workshop for me to get that sleeve fully lined with silk. But I learned so much that it was totally worth it! I believe Jean Frost has an information section on lining hand knits in her latest book, “Custom Knit Jackets; Casual to Couture” which would be well worth reading.

 

After my adventure lining the Emerald Merino jacket designed by Jean Frost, I decided to build on what I had already learned and make my own design for a Chanel-style jacket so I could improve my lining technique. Since one of the most classic looks is a white jacket with black trim, I decided to use that as my inspiration. Here is the result:

 

 

I combined several yarns together to get the tweedy look that I wanted for this white jacket, and chose a textured stitch that I hoped would give the fabric a pseudo-woven look. More about the yarn and stitch pattern in my next post. To finish off the garment, I lined it in white polka-dotted silk.

 

Now all I need is a matching blouse underneath, and I have saved some of the polka dotted silk for that purpose. I just have to get over my fear of my sewing machine! For me, hand sewing is much easier than machine sewing, but I will have to get over my sewing machine phobia somehow. In the meantime, after my adventures lining these two hand knit Chanel-style jackets, I culled some useful guidelines that perhaps will be helpful to others as well.

 

1.   1. Sew the lining on by hand, don’t use a sewing machine.

There is a simple reason for this. Hand-knitted fabric is flexible and machine stitching is not. Machine sewn stitches create permanent, firm lines that cannot stretch in the same way that knitted fabric will. Therefore, the two will not live in harmony together over the life of the garment. One great technique that I learned from Jean Frosts’s class was this: To ensure that your hand-sewn quilting has flexibility, don’t knot the ends of your threads when you finish a line of quilting stitches. Just tuck the thread ends inside the lining, so they will be sealed in the area where the wrong side of the lining faces the wrong side of the knitted piece, out of sight. Keep the thread ends several inches long, so they will have plenty of range of movement over time without your stitches pulling out. That way, as your piece stretches, the stitching in the lining can stretch as well. I left about five inches of thread ends at the end of each line of stitching.

 

2.    2. Sew the wrong side of the lining against the wrong side of the knitted fabric. That way, the right sides of both will be visible, and your lining fabric’s right side is displayed every time you open your jacket and take it off. Don’t expect yourself to remember what the wrong sides of your lining are—mark them with chalk or some other erasable marker before you start quilting so you don’t waste time quilting the wrong sides of the fabric together! You would think this would be obvious, but on my second project I caught myself quilting a sleeve back to the right side of the lining and had to pull out my basting and start all over again!

 

3.    3. Use vertical lines of hand stitching to secure the lining. This quilting approach originated with Chanel jackets, so if you are looking for a similar effect, use the same approach to your lining. The purpose of the quilting was to stabilize a loosely woven fabric with a silk backing so that it would hold its shape. If you want a guide, after you pin your knitted piece and the silk lining together, you can baste vertical lines with a contrast thread as a marker first, starting with the middle of the piece that is being lined, and then placing each successive seam one inch out from the midpoint to the right and left, until you reach the edge of the piece, so that everything is symmetrical. Leave plenty of room on the sides for seams. For me, two inches away from the sides of each piece I stopped quilting and just left the knitted fabric and the silk fabric loose, to be dealt with when the whole garment was assembled later.

 

4.      4. Line each piece individually. Each piece of your handknit jacket should be quilted with a lining before you assemble your garment. Then you will sew the knitted pieces together to form the completed garment, and then finally you will sew the seams of the lining fabric together to finish the inside. As you can see from the image below, after the knitted pieces were assembled, the edges of the silk lining were folded under, overlapped over each other (front lining overlaps the back) and then secured using hand stitching. 

5.    5. Decide that you are going to line your project BEFORE you knit it. This is absolutely essential, because the lining process pulls in the knitted fabric, basically making it smaller by at least one garment size. To make matters worse, lined knit fabric loses all its stretch, so principles of negative ease no longer will show off your figure, and your jacket will simply look too small. After assembling my two jackets, I have found that at least 3 inches of the garment are lost to the lining process. So, in future, I will add at least 3 inches to the finished dimensions that I want to have for any jacket I knit. On the other hand, if you end up with a knitted garment that went off gage and knitted up way too big, lining it may be a great solution to improve the fit.

 

6.    6. Build in extra room for the bust and hips. Most Chanel jackets sit on the high hip area, where hips tend to curve the least, so that calculation is not quite as much of a headache as the bust, but make sure that when you choose a size for your knitting pattern that you choose a size that will accommodate your high hip measurement + ease for the lining. In other words, if the jacket sits on the hip 4 1/2 inches below the waist, measure the width of your hips 4 1/2 inches below the waist, and use that measurement + ease for the lining when you choose the pattern size. Because I have wider hips, I tend to lengthen my Chanel jackets, as that looks more flattering on me, so my jackets are usually 5.45 - 6.5 inches long after the waist, which means the measurement is even wider and I have to choose a larger size.

 

T   The bust measurement is even more important.  Silk lining renders the knitted fabric inflexible compared to a normal knit, so the fabric will not stretch to accommodate your bust the way it usually does. If you are over a B cup, you might want to strongly consider using bust darts or some other technique to add in enough fabric to accommodate your upper curvature. Otherwise, what will happen is that the edges of the jacket will be distorted, creating a curve in front because more gapping is occuring in the bust area. By the time I discovered this problem with my white jacket, it was too late to go back and reknit the front pieces, as they had already been quilted in silk. If I could have done it all over again, I would have knitted bust darts in the front to avoid this problem. See how, in the photo below, the jacket edges are furthest apart at the bust? Lesson learned!

 

7.    7. Sew on your pockets before you line the front pieces! Since you do not want the stitching for your pocket joins to mess up your beautiful lining, you must complete all the pocket work before you line the front pieces. That way, when you open up your jacket, the inside will be as beautiful as the outside! As a little extra, I also lined my pocket pieces with silk before I sewed them onto the fronts, and I love the way they turned out:

 

    In spite of the front curvature, I love my White Chanel jacket and I wear it all the time to work. Thanks to the lining, it is an elegant classic piece I can wear all year long.