Hello,
Firstly I
need to apologise that this is blog post is a day late, but I was spending some
quality time with my Mum, celebrating her and Mother’s Day. I know its two days
late but Happy Mother’s Day to you and your Mothers if you celebrate it.
Anyway back
to this week’s blog, if you couldn’t already tell it is a behind the scenes
look as to how I made my scrunchies and the trails and errors I had to go
through to get to the end result, you have been seeing on my Etsy, Facebook and
Instagram. I did create a poll over on my Instagram asking if anyone would be
interested in this type of blog post as I did a similar one for my hats which
you can see by clicking this link. So if you are not a textiles/knitting person
and aren’t interested in seeing my fails then this blog post might not be for
you; but if you do then please carry on reading. Also at the end will be
pictures of my new scrunchie colours if you haven’t already seen them, again if
you’re not interested in the actually knitting/development process then just
scroll to the bottom to see my new colours.
I know it’s probably not the best thing for me to be showing you my fails when I am trying to grow my own business but I want to show that I am human and I think it will be good to look back on. I’d also love it if I could help other knitters out there, by them learning from my mistakes as machine knitting isn’t always easy and it’s hard to find resources and manuals to help. So if my silly mistakes could help someone I’m willing to show you all my silly fails. I also like to show you the development and process I have to go though, as my products just appear on Etsy and I think it’s interesting to go back and show you it didn’t just happen I did have to work for it.
Idea:
Every once
in a while I like to do a little brain storming where I try to think of new
potential products I can make, sometimes they just randomly come to me and
other times I like to set a dedicated time where I try to rack my brain for
ideas. My scrunchie idea came about during one of my brainstorming times, but
it originally came from another product idea that I was planning, but that’s a
secret at the minute, sorry. As I explained last week I was really
excited that I thought about making scrunchies, unlike my hats, to me
scrunchies isn’t something I associate with knitting. So I was so happy that to
me I was creating something which I hadn’t really seen before but this doesn’t
mean that they don’t already exist. One of the hardest things is coming up
with potential product ideas, especially original ideas; there are so many
lovely and creative knitting products all over my Instagram. So it is very
tricky trying to come up with your own ideas, but I would never want to copy
someone as I know I would hate it if I felt like someone was copying my idea
that I had worked hard for. I think its ok to take inspiration from someone or
their work but don’t directly copy, make it your own. Sorry that took a turn
into me nagging. I think what I’m trying to say is, knitted scrunchies probably
existed for many years before I made mine, but to me probably because I naively
didn’t do any background research, I truly feel like this idea came from my own
head.
Research/Deconstruction:
A couple of
years back, when we were going on holiday I chose to buy lots of scrunchies as
I thought they would be great for holding my hair up whilst around the pool
especially with all the summery patterns. And they were but once I got back to
England I forgot about them and went back to my normal hair bands until about a
year ago when as I explained in my last blog post, it felt like my hair was
breaking a hairband every other week due to me having so much of it (it went down to my bum). Since then
I have been using the same scrunchie for over a year now and it still hasn’t
broken, hence another reason why I wanted to make my own scrunchies.
When I thought about the process for making a
scrunchie, I chose to deconstruct and cut open one of the many scrunchies that
I had so that I could see how they were made, which you can see below. I
had a rough idea as to how they were made but deconstructing one helped to firm
it, especially the elastic inside.
Some of my brought scrunchies which i got for holiday, from
Primark a few years ago.
Here is the deconstruction of one of my scrunchies.
Trail 1:
After
deconstruction, planning how I would make my own scrunchies and doing some
quick calculations I then decided to knit on my machine. This calls for the
first fail/error. This trail was cut short due to my hand slipping accidentally knocking my carriage out of knitting circular to knitting full bed,
which if you’re not a knitter or a machine knitter means that my knitting
wouldn’t create a space/hole between the knitting in which I could feed the
elastic band through to make the scrunchie. I knocked the dial on my carriage
which meant it wouldn’t create this hole in between the knitting. That is a
very basic explanation as it is a lot more complicated than that but I wanted
to keep it simple so that any non-knitters would understand, as I know a few
years ago I wouldn’t have understood. So except from that slip up, I also
realised that I add over estimated my calculations as the knitting I had done
was too wide. So for the next trial I chose to remove some of the needles,
making the width of the scrunchie narrower.
Trail 1.
Trial 1 width comparison to deconstructed scrunchie.
Trail 2:
My next
trail was mainly about trying to knit the whole length and also making the
knitting narrower by removing some needles as the first try was too wide. As
you’ll be able to see in the pictures below, I managed to knit more than last
time, however my calculations were still wrong and what I had knitted was too short,
as you can see from the comparison against the deconstructed scrunchie. It also
didn’t create the desired ruffles/gathers which scrunchies have. This error
really was just common sense (for knitters anyway) when working out the
measurements I didn’t take into the account that I was knitting circular,
meaning that the row counter was counting the front and the back bed rows
separately. So what was two rows according to the machine was really only one
row over all, so ideally I needed to double my original calculated number, but
I didn’t realise this till after all my trails, which you will read next. If
none of that made sense don’t worry because it’s not really something you need
to know, but it makes sense to me.
Knitting trail number 2 scrunchie.
Length comparison of scrunchies.
Tail 2.
Trail 3:
For my third
trail I was happy with the width of my scrunchie but as you saw above I needed
to make it longer, if id of realised about my calculations and circular
knitting, this would have been the last trail. But no I decided to just add
another 30 or so rows to hopefully create the ruched effect I wanted. I suppose
this just shows that you are always learning and if I didn’t make these
mistakes I wouldn’t have realised what I was doing wrong, looking back it was
only common sense but I think I was too excited to be making a new product,
that I just went with it and didn’t think logically about it. As you can
probably guess the scrunchie still wasn’t long enough. It did give me more of
the ruching effect I wanted but I still wasn’t happy with it, it wasn’t enough.
Maybe if I decreased the length of the elastic band, but then I was worried it
would not hold all of someone’s hair especially thick hair or really long hair
(like I use to have). Please ignore the horrific seam; I only quickly stitched
it together so that I could see the final look.
Trial 3.
Trail 3 seam.
Comparison of first three trails.
Trail 4:
Again I
still hadn’t realised about the whole circular knitting factor so like trail
three, I decided to just knit a few more rows. More rows means longer knitting and
hopefully more of the ruching effect that I wanted my scrunchies to have. Again
my scrunchie still wasn’t long enough, yes it has a lot more ruching which is
good but if you look at the comparison of it next to my final scrunchie you
will see that it wasn’t enough. I wanted to still increase the length of the
knitting so that it would be able to stretch to the same capacity as the
elastic band which was inside. Again (sorry again seems to be my favourite word
today, think I need to go back to school) the seam isn’t great I really
struggled with figuring out how to do the seams, as I have spoken about
before on my blog, my hand sewing isn’t great. It defiantly isn’t my
strong point, but I like to give it ago and have all my products hand finished. Some say its part of the charm of being handmade. I knew that I couldn’t not have a visible seam but I just had to try to figure
out how to make a nicer one then the first two I had tried.
Trail 4.
Trial 4 seam.
Scrunchie comparison: closest is the final scrunchie and towards the back is trail 4.
Scrunchie comparison: closest is the final scrunchie and towards the back is trail 4.
Trail 5/End Result:
I am so
happy to say that this was the last trial, well expect from trying different
seams. Similar to most of the other trails it was mainly about trying to make
the scrunchie longer by knitting more rows. It is quite likely that I increased
my knitting by quite a few more rows, however I can’t quite remember how much
but I do remember the overall number, which gave me my desired ruched/gathered
effect. Below you can see my final knitted scrunchies as well as the
colours that I offer.
When i am knitting i always have a chair at the side of me where i can quickly grab the tools i want and look at my patterns/method of making.
Knitting a carnation coloured scrunchie.
Some of the tools/materials needed for construction.
Some of the tools/materials needed for construction of my carnation coloured scrunchie.
Another picture of my side chair, which contains all the tools and resources i need when knitting.
My scrunchies, colours from top to bottom: carnation, sherbet, candy floss, wisteria and soft peach.
My scrunchies.
Carnation coloured scrunchies (the scrunchie to the right is iridescent).
Sherbet coloured scrunchies (the scrunchie to the right is iridescent).
Wisteria coloured scrunchies (the scrunchie to the right is iridescent).
Soft peach coloured scrunchies (the scrunchie to the right is iridescent).
Candy floss coloured scrunchies (the scrunchie to the right is iridescent).
Close up of sherbet coloured scrunchie.
Close up of wisteria coloured scrunchie.
Close up of candy floss coloured scrunchie.
Close up of soft peach coloured scrunchie.
Image from a customer wearing my candy floss coloured scrunchie.
Image from a customer wearing my candy floss coloured scrunchie.
New Scrunchie Colours:
Below are
pictures of my new scrunchie colours. These all came about via custom colour
requested orders. So if you like my knitted scrunchies but don’t like my colours
or would like a different colour/shade then please feel free to message me (my
links will be at the end) as I am more than happy to help. However please keep
in mind that if you request a new colour it will take longer to get to you then
it says on Etsy due to me having to order that requested yarn colour.
My new scrunchies, colours from top to bottom: black iridescent, burgundy, black, aster.
Black coloured scrunchie.
Black iridescent scrunchie.
Burgundy iridescent scrunchie.
Aster coloured scrunchie.
Black and black iridescent scrunchie.
I just want to say thank you so much for anyone who
has ever ordered from me, especially recently as I have never had so many
orders in just a few weeks and I am so grateful. I was totally shocked when the
orders just kept coming in, so thank you!
For my next blog post I will hopefully have a
new Etsy announcement but that may mean that the next blog post might have to
be pushed back a few days or weeks. This is because I was meant to be working
on the new thing a couple of weeks ago but due to all the orders that I kept
having I wasn’t able to as they had to take priority. This isn’t me complaining
at all, I love working on your new orders, I’m just trying to explain that
there might be a bit of a break from my blogs. This is because I haven’t got anything
planned and my next Etsy announcement might take a while, I hope you can
understand.
However if there is a blog post idea you would
like me to do or something that you would like to know about me or my business
then please let me know.
As always thank you so much for reading,
Love Karmann Jean
My contacts/links:
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