Monday, February 16, 2009

Madrona

Yesterday, I had the privilege of taking a Finishing Class with Jean Wong at the Madrona Fiber Arts Retreat in Tacoma. If you ever get to take a class with Jean, I highly recommend it.

The class was pretty labour intensive. We had to knit 11 swatches, small swatches mind you, but 11 swatches nonetheless, before the class. Then in class we learned how to do an invisible cast-off on 1 by 1 ribbing and 2 by 2 ribbing for cardigans and pullovers. We also learned the Japanese method of short rows which I've been wanting to learn because it creates a fabric that doesn't have holes. At the end of the class we learned how to mattress stitch our 2 by 2 swatches together and our 1 by 1 swatches together so that the pattern continues without losing a stitch. Very impressive.

Jean has a Professional Finishing Techniques dvd that I purchased so that I can remember everything she taught us. I think I'm going to need it because we covered a lot of techniques in the class.

3 comments:

emicat said...

Sounds like a very informative class! I would love to take more classes next time, but I feel that I need to bump up a few more skills before I feel comfortable doing so.

But learning stranded colorwork is definitely a good start for me :)

Carrie said...

Oooh, I'm jealous--we didn't have time to cover mattress stitch, and it's one of my worst skills. Is it covered on her DVD?

Rhonda said...

Yes, it covers mattress stitch. In class we seamed the 2 number 1 swatches together and the 2 number 4 swatches togehter but the video shows more than that.