while I am asking for help…

Thursday, October 6, 2005

Does anybody have any idea how to seam these shoes? The only seaming lesson in the book - baby knits for beginners - is for the various ways to do mattress stitch (selvedge to selvedge, selvedge to cast off, etc). The pattern says nothing more enlightening than to seam the shoes easing in the toe, so you would assume that she means you to use the techniques taught in the book - ie mattress stitch. Apart from the bit where she says to turn the shoe right side out when you are done, which you would not need to do if it were mattress stitch. Also, mattress stitch on tiny little baby shoes seems kind of bulky. So suggestions anyone?

Update: thankyou all so much for your suggestions! Just to clarify I am only struggling with which seaming technique to use, I do know which bits to attach where, if that makes sense. I think Julia’s modified mattress stitch suggestion may be the way to go at the moment.

Debbie Bliss Moss Stitch Shoes

Has anyone else noticed that my almost finished WIPs are breeding?

6 Comments

Comment by andrea on 7/10/2005 @ 12:35 am

i ended up abandoning this project - i loved the way it looked in the book, but mine looked too lumpy and felt too stiff with all the seaming - but just wanted to say i disliked debbie bliss patterns for this reasons alone - they’re beautiful but too often flat-out wrong or just missing important chuncks of information. ack!

( if you’re interested, i have one loney pic of my wip here: http://mellowtrouble.net/fotos/363/stash?imagenum=10 )

the color you chose is lovely, by the way..

Comment by Chris in MN on 7/10/2005 @ 1:15 am

Hi Jo - Alisson sent people over here to look. If you haven’t already figured it out, it looks to me like the u-shaped part is the top with the opening for the foot. You would fold long-wise so the pointy parts are lined up, sew around three quarters of the way, then seam up the ends of the U. Does that make sense?

Nice to meet you!

Comment by Robyn on 7/10/2005 @ 2:43 am

Hi! I think Kerrie at www.kerriesplace.co.uk knit a whole bunch of these and might be able to help you.

Comment by Daphne on 7/10/2005 @ 2:44 am

I’m with Chris. You might want to pin together the far edges of the toe–the place where the triangle bottom hits the long side–before you start seaming and focus on easing in the toe first. (The bigger triangle is the top of the toe.) The flat ends of the U become the back of the shoe against the heel.

Comment by Julia on 7/10/2005 @ 2:56 am

Um. I don’t think that was the question, was it?

For baby booties, I do what I call “modified mattress” stitch, which is basically a mattress-like technique employed at the farthest edges of the knit so that nothing gets turned under to create a bulky seam. Since they’re small seams its really not a big deal to play around with your technique to see what works - you can always rip and start over.

You’re right that if you were seaming inside out you wouldn’t use mattress (or my modified version), but I’m not totally sure what the author intends, as I think the inside out methods might be bulky as well.

Good luck and let us know what you come up with!

Comment by isel on 7/10/2005 @ 7:14 am

I made these and ran into the same problem. I managed to seam one, but didn’t like the way it looked. I’ll try the second one to see what happens.

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