My Bowtie Scarflette

As I mentioned in my previous post I've been working on some new items for my Etsy store.  Sales have been slumping quite a bit, which makes me a bit sad, but oh well, that's the nature of doing business - you have busy times and you have slow times.  But it has given me a chance to try out something new.

This idea all started a few months ago when I went shopping with my sis and Ed.  We went to Anthropolgie because for my birthday they had sent me a coupon that gave me 15% off my purchase.  While there I came across a bowtie scaflette that had a cotton liner sewed into it.  I thought - that's brilliant!  Especially for wool items, because I know a lot of people (including myself) have wool sensitivies.

I knew I didn't want to sew in the lining by hand.  My hand sewing skills are not quite up to par.  I actually don't think I have the patience for hand sewing.  I find that when I first start off, my stitches look even and alright, but as I keep going my stitches get bigger and bigger, and then it just looks sloppy.  Yes I know, I'm impatient (couldn't you tell by my other posts? LoL).  I began to read up on how to sew items with a sewing machine to a knitted item and found out it was not so easy.  Knitted items stretch, so you have to be super careful when feeding it in through the machine. 

So a couple of weeks ago I had time to knit up a bowtie scarf - I got the pattern off Ravelry and it's quite simple really.  I bought some cotton material with a nice print, cut it to size, then headed over to my parents house to use their sewing machine.  I read on a website to use a zig-zag stitch, which I started out using, but for some reason the machine would miss some stitches and some of them turned out to be just a straight stitch.  I had the cotton material on top of the knitted material, and I think the thread wasn't catching the knitted material at the bottom.  After about 4 cycles of sewing and  ripping, I decided to go to a straight stitch - I finally had it! 

Just make sure you use a ton of pins to keep the everything together - this will also help prevent the knitted material from stretching too much.  And go slow - it's not a race! :D

My prototype turned out pretty good, but the final product turned out better.  Before I had a straight rectangular piece, but I found when I put the scarf on you could see the corners of the material sticking out.  So I ended up chamfering the corners. 

And here's my final product!

It's now for sale @ my Etsy Store