Sew an Infinity Scarf in No Time at All

Following my success at making my pom-pom trimmed cowl, blogged about here, I saw a tutorial (actually, there are probably a million of them) for an infinity scarf and decided to make one. Living in western New York, you can never have too many neck coverings.

Jan's Infinity Scarf Tutorial is the best-explained of all the ones I've seen, at least, for me. The only change I made was to press the seam allowances open, including the portion that will be sewn last. It made that little bit of hand sewing turn out so nice.

Here's mine:

If you have a piece of soft fabric that at least 1-1/2 yards long, you can make one, too. As Jan explains, you can make it as wide or as narrow as you'd like, so you can use a fabric as soft and drapey as this silk – or you can make it from something like thick faux fur.

Let me know if you give it a try, okay?

Thanks, Jan, for a great tutorial!

Blessings and peace..

Easy No-Knit Yarn Cowl

I saw a tutorial for another cute cowl and thought I'd give it a whirl. This one is for a friend whose birthday we're celebrating tomorrow. It's five or six "braids" of yarn, each braid being made up of 3 sets of 8 strands of yarn, 40 inches long, then braided. Here's my end result:

The full tutorial is here. Please go take a quick look at her pretty blue cowl, then come right back, okay?

I ran into a bit of trouble with my first attempt, which resulted in this:

My wrapped section is about
three times what it should be.

Okay, I have more yarn. And my friend probably likes red better, anyway. I didn't see a way to end up with the desired result following the instructions, so I modified it a bit.

Instead of cutting 120 or 148 40-inch long strands of yarn, then combining them into groups of 8 strands, then each 8-strand each of which becomes one -- oh I can't do this math again.

Anyway, I decided to make one very long braid, then wind it around five times. Each strand started out about 15 feet long. Go ahead, laugh at me; think about braiding someone's hair that is so long that you are in different rooms for the last third. Oh and think about when you're braiding something really long, the "unbraided" sections are, in fact, braiding themselves. So you have to -- at the same time that you're pinching the braid, unbraid the lower portion. Ay-yi-yi.

Here are my 3 sets of 8 strands of yarn:

And a close up of one:

And because I knew that the instruction in the original tutorial, to tape the strands down to your work surface, would not hold for me, I knotted the ends of each strand and used binder clips:

And clipped them tightly:

And then I hung the binder clip on a pegboard clip:

I then started braiding. And braiding. And braiding. Then I wrapped it around five times, machine-stitched the braids together, used a bit of red duct tape to cover the ends, and wrapped yarn around the duct tape. The result:

I think she'll like it. I'm going to make one for myself, but it will be when I have a helper, someone who can unbraid the lower ever-getting-more-tangled part while I'm braiding away.

Is it worth your time to see someone's real-life experience following a tutorial? What do you like about it?

Oh, and is anyone interested in some dark orange (official color name Paprika) braids? And the rest of the ball of yarn, too. It's Paton's worsted weight wool. For a doll? Or a costume? I'll give them to the first person to request them in the Comments.

Blessings and peace...

Pompom-Trimmed Cowl

Here's a link to the cowl I had in mind to make:

Pompom-Trimmed Cowl. The link is to the great tutorial.


In my sewing room, this is not a good sign (but it's a great tip):

Damp sponge with little threads

I use a dampened sponge to "catch" or hold threads when the air is dry. The threads would rather stick to the damp sponge than to my fingers.

I wanted to make the cowl right away, so instead of ordering the trim from Purl Soho, I bought the size of black pompom trim that was available at Joann's. It's larger than the trim used in the tutorial, so I adjusted the width of the double fold from 3/4 in. to 1-1/4 in. to accommodate the larger trim. Because I'm so smart and can figure everything out.

I marked and pressed my fabric:

I used a denim size 100 needle because the border of the trim, which is stitched through, is quite dense, in addition to the multiple layers of fabric. Oh yes, all figured out.

Just fine until the tutorial didn't happen to take into account one of my little sewing quirks: I like to stitch from the right side of the fabric whenever possible. It usually results in a nicer finished look. In this project, however, after I sewed the pompom trim close to the edge of the double-folded edge, with the fold wrapped to encase the trim, it looked like this:

So I took out the stitching (see sponge at top), pressed the fabric again, and started over. I decided that one more row of stitching wouldn't hurt anything, and so, on to Plan B. I sewed the trim to the folded fabric, needle position far left, and sewed from the wrong side of the fabric.

Then I folded the fabric over, shown here to the left of the presser foot, to completely encase the trim. And, using my zipper foot, sewing through all layers, stitched the trim to the fabric again, this time with the needle in the far right position, close to the pompoms, again on the wrong side of the fabric.

I then sewed the third row of stitching through all layers, this time with the needle position at far left.

Ta da! Success! I pressed the sewn edge. I then repeated my revised process on the other long edge of the fabric. I followed the rest of the tutorial at Purl Soho Tutorial.

Here's the finished cowl:

I wouldn't want it even 1 inch shorter. I just ordered more pompom trim to make a few more.

Update: Karendee asked what size pom poms I used for my cowl. Here's a photo:

Those are 1-in. yellow-on-green grid lines, so, including the edging, each pompom is about 1-1/4 in. At Joann's, the rolls of this fringe are marked 3/4 inch, and as you can see, each pompom is (almost) 3/4 in. in diameter.

Blessings and peace...