In my usual “why not just make it up?” fashion, I have decided I need to make two throw pillows for a new couch at our house. I want a good jolt of color, and more than one color at that, so I thought I would basically make “Booga pillows,” with Noro Kureyon a la the Booga Bag. The simplicity and lack of decision-making (once I choose a Kureyon color) is tremendously appealing.
My questions and concerns have to do with sizing to get the right dimensions in the end, and with judging how much yarn to buy. I know I will have to do a swatch myself and see how it felts, but I need advice about quantity of yarn for the whole project, so I can get it ordered. I have been thinking that, in order to have some margin of error, I should make each side of my pillow cover so big that it will leave a border around the pillow form, even after felting. I would stitch the borders together flat around the pillow, the way many shams are made (I hope I am making myself clear). This means I should aim for four 15 x 20" finished, felted pieces for the whole, 2-pillow project. To make it a bit more interesting, I intend to knit one with the stripes running the long way, and the other with the stripes running the short way, which I know will complicate the felting dimension-change analysis, but I’m prepared to deal with that.
My questions for you, my fabulous knitting cyber-friends, are:
- Will the felted fabric (double-thick) have enough substance to hold its shape as the border for the sham?
- Can I really trim the felted fabric without fear, if necessary? I am thinking I would sew the two pieces together around the edge, as well as around the form, and I may even do a blanket stitch around the edge, just for detail.
- How much yarn should I order? The on-line Booga Bag pattern here says 3 skeins per bag. Is there anyone out there who has made this bag, or something else measurable and felted, out of Kureyon, who can give me some guidance about how much yarn it will take me to produce the four 15 x 20" pieces I hope to do?
- Did you use #10.5 needles for your felted Kureyon project? If you made your Booga Bag according to the pattern instructions, did it felt to the size predicted? If so, how felt-y was it? Could you still see stitches well? I found this amazing Booga Bag Gallery. It has helped me a lot in visualizing how this yarn knits up. Some of the bags are much more felty than others but there is no indication how close the finished bags came to the given dimensions.
Thanks very much for reading this far!