My mother asked me about shortening the sleeves on a lovely cashmere cardigan she was given. Like me, she ends up rolling up a lot of sleeves. Unfortunately this is a fine-gauge knit with a delicate edging. I was thinking of turning up the sleeves on the inside, but it occurred to me that some kind of smocking for a few inches might shorten the sleeves more decoratively. Has anyone ever tried this?
"spampot" skrev i melding news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...
Shampot, I am not sure what smocking is, but if you mean a fold some place on the arm; I have done it. I made a 2 cm. fold on the "over arm" a bit over the elbow, used machine , and the result was well. That was on a lambs wool sweater. Today I would, may be, have done something decorative out of it, using beads, for example, and may be used the same beads some place at the "body" too. But THEN the fashion was very functionel, so BEADS was far out of the question!LOL! AUD ;-))
I haven't, but I have seen stitch patterns that were effectively smocking knitted in. And anyway, smocking is done in such a way that if it doesn't work, you can take it out with no harm done.
But I'm not sure whether it would shorten the sleeve enough to do what is needed. It might take a lot of rows.
=Tamar
I take it that this is a store bought cardigan. Are the sleeves steeked, was the knitted material cut and sewn. if so, would it be possible to take the sleeve out and shorten it at the armhole and sew it with your machine back in. What do you steekers, think would that work
Els
Haven't done it personally, but I have seen patterns for it in machine knitting books. Some used a stitch pattern to aid the process and some just did the smocking on plain stockinet. There were some that looked like smocking that were just tuck stitch patterns, with no true smocking as well. Thing is, smocking will draw up the fabric in width as well as length, and that could be a problem depending where you do it on a sleeve.
Helen "Halla" Fleischer, Fantasy & Fiber Artist
Oh, Els, I'd be TERRIFIED to do that!! I've never steeked in my life and to experiment with a cashmere sweater...no way!
Beads are an interesting idea. I'll keep that in mind.
You can see an example of smocking here:
One problem with that method is that if you take it up too much at the arm hole edge the sleeve might just end up too tight there. I would think you would be farther ahead to do that about 1 or 2 inches up from the edge at the wrist. If you could serge the raw edge at that point, I think it might work.
Thank you, Spampot! We call it Waffle Seam! In my children I had it on several of my dresses, to keep the girth together over the chest, and then the skirt got the girth. Aud ;-))
HAHAHA!!! I hope you understood, I ment In my CHILDHOOD!!!! aud ;-))
But it has a delicate fancy edge. The idea of sewing in a small tuck could work. If the seam is just above the fancy edge, it could look like a deliberate design element.
=Tamar
Sorry, I meant the sewn edge to finish. I would leave the fancy edge alone. That's why I sug\gested doing sewing in the fold about an inch or so above the edge. Just make the fold to the inside, sew, cut and serge. If you can't serge it maybe you could hand sew a bit of bias tape to cover the raw edge where you cut it. Clear as mud, huh?
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