Hand-embroidered hats: Top Gun logos

I don’t often see the words “Top Gun” and “embroidered” in the same sentence. The combination brings to mind a cut-throat needlework academy – a place where high-flying crafting hopefuls train their way to the top, and break all the rules doing it. But, I digress. This week, I finished the embroidered knit project I had been working on for February.

The Task

The beau’s cousin, J, recently asked if I could knit him and his best friend a pair of matching caps. Children of the 80s, J and his pal are both big fans of the 1986 film Top Gun. I admit: what I know about the plot comes very second-hand. I haven’t redressed my lack of knowledge by watching it, but in the film “Iceman” (Val Kilmer) and “Maverick” (Tom Cruise) are fierce aviation-school rivals who develop a loyal wingmen friendship by the end. They also happen to be J and his pal’s favourite on-screen buddies. The knitting request was simple: could I knit 2 caps – an “Iceman” and “Maverick” hat for J and his pal, respectively? Knowing little about Top Gun fandom myself, I liked the idea of making something in the name of friendship while trying some new knitting techniques.

The Caps 

I chose to knit the Scraptastic hat pattern, using size 3 needles and two strands of fingering weight held together. At my gauge (slightly looser than the pattern), Medium turned out good, though a tad roomier than I expected. I knit the subsequent hat in Small for a closer fit.

The Graph

Given full creative hat-design leeway, I thought that using the movie logo would be 80s nostalgic while channeling a little bit of the irony of a knit-embroidery tribute to a movie about fighter pilots.

I used Stitch Fiddle to graph my design out. It allows you to enter your gauge (over 4″/10 cm) to render a grid that reflects your particular tension for making colour work charts. Stockinette stitches tend to be a little wider than they are tall. Because of this, using square-box graph paper to plan a design may result in a slightly skewed final project. Programs like Stitch Fiddle allow for a better idea of what the finished design will actually look like. It’s simple to use; rows and columns are added and deleted with a mouse click. It’s like Excel for your DIY colourwork, embroidery, and cross-stitch projects. All I have to say is “yes!” to this indispensable online tool, and others like it.

The Embroidery

Just a single strand of fingering weight and some duplicate stitching was enough to do the trick. I eased into embroidering slowly, working on the hats during free moments during the day. I tend to find my stitching stride best at night, after dinner. The fluid motions of embroidery, and the vigilance to tension, develop a finger-tip attentiveness to the materials quite different from knitting. In contrast to the hardy, elastic, and structured fabric of knitting, embroidered things feel a bit more fragile and precarious to me – until they’re done, my m.o. is to handle with care.

Less exciting was weaving in all the ends. I learned late in the game to use a single long strand to embroider multiple letters, rather than cutting my strand after each character.

Also, I personally find it best to work the duplicate stitch from the bottom to top, starting at the base of a letter, then working up and across. It’s just a little neater that way, I find.

Finally, the Top Gun hats

On the way…

And done.

All in all, this was a fun project. It’s hard not to see blank stockinette surfaces as a canvas for some stitchery waiting to happen. It was a surprise for the knitting to unexpectedly serve as a gateway to embroidery.

To embroidering, and matching hats…and friends!

 

WIP: Embroidered hats

I hope you are having a great week.

I received a request, a while ago, for a knitting commission of sorts: a request for 2 personalized ‘name’ hats, due at the end of February. I said yes (always excited to take on a new creative challenge).

But, readers, I have never knit such a thing – I have never put text on a garment. As I watched tutorial after tutorial for intarsia and stranded knitting over the last few days, I wondered if I could deliver the promised goods. Beyond mastering stranded/intarsia techniques (no simple feat), there was the question of designing a colour chart, finding a way to work it into a hat pattern that didn’t initially include one, while making sure to observe the proportions of the letters, the positioning of the name on the hat, etc. I couldn’t conceive of how to pull this off.. I was all question marks – a big long “uhhhhh……??”

Eureka!: Embroidery

A ray of light came through the clouds. I discovered the Duplicate stitch (a.k.a. Swiss darning). Often used on knits for lettering and monograms, the duplicate stitch is a nifty over-embroidery technique. One simply follows ‘on top’ and around each v-shaped stockinette stitch with a contrast strand, as below.

Embroidery must have been invented so that human beings could cultivate awe and develop their powers of contemplation. That’s my theory, at least. I love embroidery – looking at it, following out the details with my eye, running my fingers over the stitches. It’s just delightful. When it comes to doing the actual embroidering, however, I’m an absolute newbie.

After some experimenting with different fibers and thicknesses for this project, I decided to embroider the names on the hats using a single strand of fingering weight (as above). This does not offer perfect stitch coverage, but neither does it bend the knitting out of shape the way doubled thread did (making the stitches look tense and stressed). I was on my way.

Another use for gauge swatches: home for letter-y experiments.

The Hats

The 2 requested hats are for a ski trip. I chose Jane Tanner’s Scraptastic Hat – a simple, close-fitting beanie that hopefully won’t fly off on the slopes. Meant to be worked using sock yarn remnants, the pattern specifies US 2 needles, at a gauge of 7 sts to the inch. Using two strands of superfine/fingering yarn held together, I used my US 3 needles (6 sts/inch). I sized down in the pattern (Large to Medium, for ex.) to compensate for producing a slightly bigger garment than the gauge intends. The finished hat did end up on the roomier side, but is still wearable.

One hat done, one to go.

I look forward to posting the hats as I continue to work on them. I can only hope the embroidery muses will help get my skills up to snuff in time. I’ve got my needles crossed. More on this project soon.

Happy weekend, friends.

Beanies

The 2 beanies I’ve been working on are done. While I first tried my hand at knitting a number of hats a long, long time ago (mostly of my own design and requiring hilarious braided ‘straps’ to keep them on – they were simply too loose), these 2 beanies are my very first attempt at working directly from a pattern.

They were both done on Size 3 (US) needles. The green cap follows Purl Soho’s Classic cuffed hat pattern (minus the pom pom). The brown watch cap (above) is for the beau, and is Melissa LaBarre’s ribbed Icehouse Hat – a great beanie pattern available for free download on Ravelry. The pattern calls for 5 inches of ribbing before shaping the top; the beau asked for a cap with an ample cuff, so I added an additional 3″ to the 5″ = 8″ before shaping the top. I brought this knit with me on the bus and subway. It was an incredibly portable, train-platform-at-rush-hour kind of knit.

Ribbing in the round, started November 11th.

Getting there with my paper clip stitch marker.

Left: Purl Soho’s Classic Cuffed Hat w/o pom pom. Slouchy and relaxed. Right: Melissa LaBarre’s ribbed Icehouse hat. A close-fitting utilitarian watch cap.

Some learnings

After completing my first pair of socks recently, I assumed that these basic hats – tuques as we call ’em in Canada – would be a walk in the park. Not so. Shaping the top of the Icehouse Hat – i.e. decreasing from 120 to only 8 stitches at a pace of 4 decreased sts per row, and on slippy DPNs – required some pep talks. So did keeping the 4 stitch-markers consistently in the right spots, as the decreasing number of stitches seemed to require that they be constantly redistributed across the needles. It was a long and winding knit staircase to the top. I have much to learn (counsel from wiser knitters welcome!).

Also, I’m learning that needles matter. I had not considered the material of the needles relevant before, but after trying to knit on a plastic 16″ circular needle whose nylon/plastic cord had not enough give, I shelled out for the higher quality bamboo. The bamboo needle, I felt, not only held the stitches more securely – preventing stitches from being ‘flicked off’ and dropped under tension – but its cord was more pliant. No need to fight against a rigid cord on every single stitch.

Lessons learned.