Friday, March 05, 2010

Well Golly!


Steam blocking a/k/a "killing" acrylic really does work.


I took Elizabeth's very good advice and practiced on a swatch first, then moved to the real thing. It was still slightly unnerving, hovering a steaming iron over the piece, If the iron had actually touched the fabric it would have been melty goo and a ruined project. I worked a section at a time, standing at the ironing board, smoothing out a section and lightly steaming it, then pinning a bit more stretched and giving it some good hearty shots.




It grew considerably in size. I don't know how much (if any) of that was actual stretching of the fiber and how much was just the lace opening up.




It was an interesting experiment.
Now, as for what I might do for the third shawl of the year, I haven't a clue.

4 comments:

Kate/Massachusetts said...

Wow!! What a difference blocking made! I wouldn't have thought that acrylic would block so nicely...I will have to try a swatch to use acrylic for a "reading shawl"! Thanks for the pictures...

YarnThrower said...

WOW -- Turned out quite lovely! Ambitious to try blocking acrylic, but good to know a technique that works!

What new challenges will be in your third shawl of the year?

TracyKM said...

In the machine knitting world, many people "kill" their acrylics, because MK is so fast, but doing edgings to prevent stockinette roll is time consuming. I have never done it yet. However, I was ironing a blouse on the weekend, and gave it a little spray of water while ironing, and melted the fabric a bit in one spot. Apparently the blouse had a high nylon content :(
But your shawl looks awesome and maybe I'll give it a try on a swatch too!

Laurie said...

Beautiful! Love the pattern & color! I need to make one!