Uncategorized

WIP: felted loops pillow

February 1, 2012

felted loops pillow

I saw this pillow in the lion brand catalog and immediately fell in love. “I must make it,” I thought, and promptly pinned it to my things I want to make board on Pinterest. Well, turns out, easier said than done….waaaayyyy easier said than done. This has turned out to be quite the process. I’ll bring you up to speed with my felted loops pillow process. The pattern is free on Lion Brand Yarn’s website, you just have to sign in with a free account to access it.

Lion Brand Fishermen's Wool

I loved that pillow in the picture so much that I opted not to alter at all. I got the exact yarn it called for, color and everything. It calls for three skeins…not a lie, you need all three.

The back of the pillow is pretty simple, just two solid knit pieces.  I did those by hand no problem and continued on. However, the next step says to knit 5 strips at 6 yards each (yup, 6 yards…18 honkin’ feet each) Each strip is only 6 stitches wide. When I started I felt like all I was doing was turning and turning and turning and my first 18-foot-long strip was barely getting there.

Ugh. There had to be a better way.

And sure enough, there was.

When I moved out of my parents’ house. My bedroom turned into the “ultimate craft room” complete with tons of yarn and two knitting machines. (how perfectly amazing is that?! My room, in my absence, is reincarnated into a knitting shrine…totally meant to be.)

My craft extravaganza a few weeks ago with all the projects I highlighted was mainly for two reasons, the knit berry hat baby gift, and to make 30 yards of yarn rope for this project.

knitting machine

So, Saturday morning, I wake up and my mom is starting to set up the knitting machine to get this yarn rope started. By the time I’m out of the shower and ready to go, I see this on the floor:

Holy cow, so much yarn-rope, so little time! And trust me, I’m not very high maintenance…I didn’t even wash my hair that day… this rope was made uber-fast.

knitting machine

Throughout the weekend we did shifts of 500+ rows of yarn rope…you can work up a sweat moving that knitting carriage back and forth! I thought I was going to be sore the next day…I was (very) relieved that I wasn’t. Come Sunday morning, we had this massive pile o’yarn:

felted loops pillow yarn rope

Total tally: 92 feet! I came home after the weekend boasting to Brandon all of our accomplishments and showed off this tangled mess of yarn. I don’t think he felt the same sense of satisfaction…

Next step, pin the yarn into loops on a foam board.

The first time (and second, and third) I just winged it. I tried to guesstimate how big the loops should be, but then get half way through and realize that there was no way I’d have enough to get to the end.

felted loops pillow pinning the loops

So then I got smart. I drew a grid on the board, 13 x 13, so I could pin the loops at all the intersections.

Because I’m an archi-nerd, and I know my archi-friends reading this thought the same thing when they saw that photo, I have to bring up the similarity to Superstudio’s Continuous Monument project…however I highly doubt the idea for this project stemmed from a knitting project…

superstudio continuous monument

Yup, that’s an architecture project.

I digress.

I also divided the 92 feet into 13 equal segments and marked each row with a pin so I would know how much rope I could use per row of loops.

***If you decide to venture into making this project, make sure you do this from the start…it will save you time!

All pinned and ready to sew together!

felted loop knit pillow

The next step is sew all the loops together.

felted loops pillow sewn yarn loop

My strategy was to sew every individual loop together and then a “lattice” strategy of sewing the rows together.

felted loops pillow

Whew! Finally all sewn together. It’s time to felt! I was super nervous to do that after all this work! Tossing it into the washing machine just seems so daunting and permanent. There’s no going back once you add some hot water and detergent!

felting yarn freak out

Needless to say I had a slight “felt freakout” before putting it in the washing machine.

What happens next?! Talk about a cliffhanger! I guess you’ll just have to come back to find out how the pillow turns out! Be sure to subscribe (if you haven’t already) to not miss out on the action!

You Might Also Like

9 Comments

  • Reply buttonsandbeeswax February 1, 2012 at 12:11 pm

    Oh my god what a mission! It looks amazing though, I’m looking forward to seeing the finished article! How cool is it that your room ended up as the knitting room! You’ve just reminded me I resolved to get to grips with my knitting machine this year, I haven’t even looked at it yet! 🙂

    Faye

    • Reply steph February 2, 2012 at 11:02 pm

      Thanks! You should get out your knitting machine…I can’t believe how fast projects can go on them!

  • Reply Melanie Lefeld February 1, 2012 at 1:55 pm

    Holy cow – I sure hope that pillow turns out beautiful after all your hard work! I now know why ‘cool’ throw pillows in stores cost so much … all the hard work that goes into them! 🙂 Would this be a good time to bring up images of the creative pillows we had at our house in BG? 🙂

  • Reply Jenny February 1, 2012 at 9:01 pm

    I thought you would sew the loops to the pillow front before you felted it. Can’t wait to see how it turns out!

  • Reply kitchen FAIL | stuff steph does February 3, 2012 at 7:48 am

    […] Post navigation ← Previous […]

  • Reply Felted Loops Pillow | stuff steph does February 7, 2012 at 11:37 am

    […] part I? check it out here Share this:Like this:LikeBe the first to like this post. This entry was posted in knit, yarn and […]

  • Reply Applique baby bibs | stuff steph does February 8, 2012 at 9:50 pm

    […] post a few weeks ago. This was part of the craft extravaganza weekend. Where I also made the yarn rope for the felted loops pillow, and the baby gift to go with the knit berry […]

  • Reply anthro-inspired pillow plus FREE template! | stuff steph does April 17, 2012 at 8:57 am

    […] I tackle, this pillow was quite the process. Not quite as involved as my felted loops pillow (both part I and part II), but still, there was a bit of a learning curve. But lucky for you I’m giving […]

  • Reply yogibrew May 13, 2012 at 12:04 pm

    “mom … set up the knitting machine,” she says so casually. THE KNITTING MACHINE?! Awesome.
    T

  • Leave a Reply