About 2 months ago I released my Untangling Cables ebook on this site and I would like to thank everybody that has bought a copy. I truly hope that there was something in there that you found informative. I have had lots of very positive feedback and suggestions about it. One of those suggestions was to put a project pattern in it. As it turns out, I was at my Sunday group with the burnt orange “swatch” from it and Sylvia suggested that it could be turned into a shrug. I liked the idea and ended up giving the swatch to Sylvia. I then decided to do a shrug from scratch using the concepts and the Barrington Braid from the ebook. I decided that it would be a great way to show the progression of cables from simple regular cables to a complex 16 strand braid. Using this basic idea, you could design almost any garment or accessory – it would make a fabulous blanket or scarf and I have a few ideas for a man’s sweater for my book as well.
I started the original shrug in a fantastic baby Alpaca by Rowan but found it too inflexible. While Alpaca is exquisitely soft I find I like it better mixed with a wool or other fiber to give it a bit of stretch and memory. The picture above is what it looked like originally. I still have that swatch and may finish it one day – okay, maybe not. I came across a yarn called Top Soft by Gedifra that was on sale and a mix of Silk, Viscose(Rayon), and Nylon. Well, it had me at the silk (always provides great drape), but add the fact that it was on sale and I decided to give it a go. The only color was white which is why it was on sale. The other problem was that I was working on this while I was on set which meant keeping it white was going to be a problem. I did keep it in a plastic bag but it is still almost impossible to keep white white while you are working on it. It didn’t matter though, I just told myself that I would wash it and block it when it was finished.
The next thing was that I would need a model and I usually give my projects to the models when they’re finished as long as they give me all the rights to all the photos I take. That’s not usually a problem (never actually) and this was no exception. Being a shrug I wanted to have a female model it. While on set for a new TV show coming up Lori called first dibs on it – she actually just gave me a great compliment about it. I decided she would get it and then started tailoring it to her size.Here is a picture of her trying it on and allowing me to gauge the number of repeats of each pattern.
Some things are not as easy to design as others, and a customized shrug (or one with pattern repeats) is definitely one of those harder things. The process is a little hit and miss when you don’t have easy access to the model to constantly fit it to see how it’s progressing. It is hard to account for the drape and while I had finished it midway and thought the rest would be a snap, I did get to a point where I thought it was going to be too large. The thing about silk is that you get great drape because of the weight, but add Viscose to it and that same weight can have a tendency to make it grow. Luckily for me though when I measured the end product it was bang on. Now I just had to wash it and block it. I tried Eucalan at first but that didn’t work. To make a long story short, this has been washed about 5 times already and is right now being blocked. For some reason there was a discoloring that was coming out as I washed it. I don’t know if that was the dyes used or some reaction to the detergents used, but in the end I did manage to get it white again. If only I could have kept it in a sealed room the whole time I was working on it! Here it is being blocked.
It grew an additional 5 inches from the washing as I had to put it in a washing machine to get rid of the discoloring. Luckily there were no ill effects from this as I would have been a little upset. When designing you don’t always know exactly what something is going to look like so you end up making a few prototypes. From this there are a few things I am going to change in the pattern that I will release shortly. If you have the ebook already you could probably make this design yourself. I will add this to the ebook and send a copy of the pattern to everyone who has already bought the book. I’ll update the pictures in my gallery to show you what it looks like on Lori and completed.
Hugzzz 😎