ribbing | Tasha Miller Griffith

Hello all! I’ve been using my computer time for the last week or so working on brand new stuff … if you can call ideas that have been rattling around in my head for a year or more “brand new” … but they now exist, in real life! Or at least on the internet.

Brand new: instructions and materials so that you can make the some of the scarves and blankets I’ve been making the last couple of seasons from cashmere ribbing! I’ve laid it out for you, with lots of tips on sewing the ribbings, plus directions for three projects. Make one of these, or make a totally new design of your own!

The color combos I found in the ribbing box are pretty great. Get these now if you love them—there’s more good stuff in there, but the next batch will be different.

Plus, Fiddleheads hats are back for fall. There are some new, incredibly cute pictures of children who shall remain nameless modeling them. It’s worth a click just to see them all. And—sigh—I think I said I wasn’t going to do this, but then I suddenly needed to, so I did—I modeled the adult size myself. The kids are SO much cuter!

I’ll be back soon, with more cool stuff!

After reading this post in the spring on Ginger Makes, I started thinking about how I do actually sew things for other people sometimes, and maybe I should post about some of them. Especially when I actually go outside and take pictures before mailing the thing off.

Sometimes, I sew a blanket for the new arrivals in the families of my nearest and dearest. The last several have been made from the scraps from these hats (quick shameless promotion: they’ll be back in my Etsy shop soon! Ask for them at your favorite kids’ store. Get me in touch with that store! Ok, I’m done).

I can’t get rid of these ribbings, they’re so irresistibly textural, and so vibrantly colored, and so buttery soft, basically perfect for a new baby’s blanket as far I’m concerned. Mamas, did I mention already felted = machine washable? (Just like the hats.)

I used the mock-serger stitch on my machine, for strength plus some stretch. With these materials, the seams will never be 100% ripple-free, so I’m going with “ripples are part of the charm.” In lieu of extra decoration, I switched thread colors at intervals as I went, and it made a big difference in the look, I love that the thread isn’t distracting from the ribbing colors.

We’re actually going to meet the recipient of this blanket today! I’m really excited.

One thing I love about making things for other people, besides the warm fuzzy feeling, is that it’s often an opportunity for me to try out a new idea and be more creative, thinking about things from another perspective.