Yule, Birthday and Other Projects 2016/2017 Part 1

Yule, Birthday and Other Projects 2016/2017 Part 1

Along side my long term project I have been working on other things. I always try to put some thought into any presents I give and often these may be handmade.

Due to the fact that these projects are gifts I usually cannot put up photographs or blogs at the time of completion because that would spoil the surprise. Therefore I am amalgamating a few finished projects to make this blog.

Christmas Project
I have some very good friends who like Owls and Dragons. This is the couple for whom I designed and knitted some egg cups. I also designed and made a sewn multifunctional owl. See blogs at bottom of the page. 

This time I decided to make some dragons for Christmas for them. After popping along to my favourite shop Knit Nottingham I bought a Dragon Pattern.

http://knitnottingham.co.uk/shop/product_info.php/products_id/1254

Dragon Pattern

Photo from Knit Nottingham Website

This was going to be a challenge for me as it was the first time I had ever tried to knit a three dimensional item. Needless to say mistakes were made. First of all contrary to common sense although I bought the tinsel yarn I didn't use the other yarn this pattern stated.

My friends favourite colours are purple and green. So I decided to make the Mother Dragon in purple and the Baby in green. I had a supply of Bamboo Cotton in these colours so I decided to use them instead of wool. The tinsel colour I bought was gold and I used this for both dragons.

I started the Mother Dragon first. The legs and gusset were quite simple.

Purple Dragon Legs

Purple Dragon Gusset




The head was slightly more complicated as I had to knit with the tinsel yarn. This was a new experience as I have never used tinsel yarn prior to this project.

Purple Dragon Body








Purple Dragon Head

Purple Dragon Head & Body Attached

It was when was when I was knitting the wings I had a problem. 

Purple Wing Right Start

Purple Wing Left Start

The Right Wing turned out correctly as shown below.

Purple Wing Right















Unfortunately the Left Wing did not go as planned. Somehow I miscounted a row and either had one row short or one row extra. This meant that one section of the wing was pointing the wrong way.

Purple Wing Left

Due to the fact I was unfamiliar with using tinsel yarn it was far too difficult for me to try and undo and correct. This meant that left me with two options. Either I had to completely undo that whole section and re-knit or I could try and disguise the fault. 

Now as it was present for Yule the project was time sensitive. I did not think that if I restarted that section I would be finished in time. Therefore I needed to try and hide the fault. That would take a bit of thinking so in the meantime I started on the Baby Dragon.

Baby Dragon Body

Baby Dragon Leg

Baby Dragon Wing

When I had got all of the Baby Dragon Knitted I added the eyes. I then switched back to the Mother Dragon

The pattern is designed so the wings are spread by feeding wires through sewn sections.Therefore I sewed one section of the wing in opposite direction 

Mother Dragon Underneath











Mother Dragon Above












I then embroidered on top of the wing to mimic the Right Wing.

Left Wing Embroidered 


After correcting my mistake I then sewed together added the eyes then stuffed the Mother and Baby Dragon

Finished Dragons

Previous Blogs
http://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/project-egg-cosy-part-1.html

http://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/egg-cosy-part-2-extras-birdowl-pattern.html

http://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/egg-cosy-part-3-extras-dragon-pattern.html

http://lady-jane-quirky.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/a-hoot-of-project.html