It's time to whip your sprang off your warp, sew it up and add a fabulous brim! Today we finish our sprang hats and show them off!
Finishing the sprang part
Once you have gotten to the middle of your warp, gather it up and tie it off by passing a short piece of thread through the final shed.
Quick tip! When tying the middle of the hat don't pull the yarn too tight, keep it a little loose. The hats seem to lay better that way.
I have a video I made as I was sewing up my own hat, but my computer seems to have fallen asleep in the middle of uploading it and now I'm not sure how long it is going to take to finish uploading. So I am going to pull some pictures from the video to hopefully show the sewing up process.
Sewing the sides with a (mostly) invisible seam
Thread one of the yarn tails onto your yarn needle and match the ends together to begin sewing up the sides.
First you will need to be able to identify the end loops. These are the loops created by the beginning pick 1 or pick 2 depending on the row.
To sew up an invisible seam, you will want to pass the yarn through one of the two end loops from the pick 2 rows.
Because I made my hat by working two threads as one, I have either two threads or four threads in my end loops.
Yeah, I should have thought about the sewing up part of this before I choose to make my hat this way, it would have been easier to show you the correct end loops on normal interlinking. Oh well.
In the picture above I have changed the color of the end loops of every other row. Notice how the dark blue and the teal wind around each other.
In the picture above I have identified the row where I picked 2 (or in my case picked 4) and am passing my needle ender the first loop. The pick 2 rows I left teal, the pick 1 row I have changed to dark blue. I will pass my needle through this loop and the loop from the corresponding pick 2 end loop on the other side.
Here I am further along and you can see I am passing my needle under the first pick 2 loop on both sides.
Also note that I am only passing my needle through the loops in one direction. In this case top to bottom. You will always enter the loops from the same side and then pass your needle over the top of work and enter from the same side again. Like whipstitching.
If you have trouble finding the first set of end loops, yea me too. Sometimes I am able to correctly identify them and other times I am not. If you started with a pick 2 row, then your yarn end will be one of the pick 2 end loops. I generally pass the yarn under the second pick 2 end loop on it's side and then the correct pick 2 end loop on the opposite side.
I hope that made sense. I think once work out how to identify the correct end loops, then it is quite easy to sew up this way.
Adding the Brim
When adding the brim you can either work directly into the end loops of the sprang, or you can make your brim separately and then whipstitch it onto the sprang.
If you add your brim directly onto the sprang, then be careful about checking the sizing as you go along. You may need to decease or increase to make your brim fit properly.
I nalbinded my brim, which is tricky, because if you don't get the sizing right nalbinding is very hard to take back out again.
I hope you had fun and learned something during this sprang-along and I cannot wait to see all the lovely hats!
I would love to do this again, let me know if you are interested in doing it again. I did feel it was a bit scattered, me posting here, everyone else on FB and Instagram. So if I do do it again, would setting up a different platform that everyone can be on be better?
I am also thinking maybe we would try doing a challenge. Where you could make whatever you wanted, but I gave you a set of parameters, such as you have to warp up in an AA, BB color pattern, or you have to incorporate both multiple thread interlinkings and multiple twists into your project. My goal is to help you stretch your creativity and experiment with using techniques you either haven't used before or using them in a new way.
Or we could just make a nice cowl scarf or shawl. Let me know!
Don't forget to post a picture of your finished hat!