Sunday, April 18, 2010

The Seamy Side of Seams?

Corny title?  Perhaps.  Did you know that the word "seamy" originally referred to the inside of a sewn garment.  According to Dictionary.com, it was a figurative phrase meaning the 

"least pleasant, worst," from seam (q.v.), the seamy side of a sewn garment being the less attractive, and thus typically turned in. The popularity of the fig. sense likely is due to its use by Shakespeare
Isn't that tidbit of knowledge interesting?  A term referring to the unpleasant look of seams is now synonymous with sordid and sleazy.

But history aside, seams are no doubt a pain--at least those of the knitted variety. But I've learned to deal with them and now feel at least a little confident about having to sew knitted pieces ( my current Bernat project will require seaming as well as the weaving-in of a zillion little ends, but that's another story).

A reader's comments reminded me that not too long ago, I too was scared of seams.  It took two toy projects for me to finally get over it.
Relaxing French Bear (aka Pierre)

I think I've recently shared this project (pictured above) not too long ago.  It's an older project from 2007-08.  He was made at the same time as another teddy bear (pictured below)
Aviator Bear (aka Daniel)

Both bears came from Debbie Bliss' book Teddy-Bears .  While many of Bliss' projects were cute, the bears and their outfits required many tiny pieces (suffice to say, I was not happy with all the itty bitty sewing).

The proverbial light blub finally went on when I watched a video on Knitting-Help.com (there are probably lots of other videos on You-Tube too, but at the time Knitting-Help was my go-to website for instructional videos).

We all make mistakes and learning something new can be challenging.  Perhaps I can share something I've gleaned from my knitting heroes (Maggie Righetti and the Yarn Harlot): it's only yarn.  So don't be scared. 

2 comments:

  1. I know what you mean about seaming since I love knitting sweaters but dread the seams! One solution is to knit in the round as much as possible. LOL.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree Allison. Working in the round is one good way to avoid seams :)

    ReplyDelete

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