What's New in Knitting: Make Your Own Clutch | Learn with Wool and the Gang

1. Getting Started & Tools: Hey guys, I'm Charlotte from Wool and the Gang. I'm one of the marketing people at Wool and the Gang in the London office. I'm a total beginner in knitting pretty much, actually I don't have total beginnings fact, but like a committed beginner, I'm still moving on trying to find new projects over and above the humble scarf. So I'm looking forward to learning something together today. Wool and the Gang is a DIY fashion brand and we're really on a mission to kind of get everyone making their own clothes, and really get to grips with their own unique style, and we believe that making your own clothes should be fun and easy. So, hopefully that's exactly what we've done and we produce knitting, crochet and macro markets for your home wears and for your garments, we have very easy-to-use instructions and video tutorials and everything to help you along the way. We provide a whole range of projects from total beginners, like hats and scarves, things that are basically a rectangle much like the clutch that we will be knitting today, up to much more intricate sweaters and thinner yarns and thinner needles and right through to home wears as well. Wool and the Gang is really on a mission to inspire the younger generation to get back into making and to really create sustainable style and we've really grown. Thanks to the power of the Internet and specifically to social media and have all of our wonderful customers sharing their makes and constantly inspiring us as well. So, the tutorial that we're going to cover today is really for total beginners, and we think it's a great introduction to knitting which in itself is a wonderful thing to do with your time, it's a really good way to relax in the evening, just put on like something you're watching on Netflix and the repetition it's the constant stage by stage, row by row, it's very very easy it's just a skill it's not an art form anybody can learn it and today we're going to really be teaching you something very very simple but which looks like it's the toughest. Okay, so today we're going to be doing one of our most popular designs called the tender loving clutch, and in this video, you will learn how to cast on, which means basically you have to get your stitches onto your needle, and the-double-must-stitch which we'll be covering today, is a really really great stitch because it looks really interesting and intricate but actually it's really easy. Then you will learn how to cast off and then you will learn how to seam up the sides and weaving your ends and that's it. In order to make your tender loving clutch, you will need three things. The first are your needles and we recommend using US size 15 or 10 mill needles, and these are actually considered quite big needles, and the reason that they are quite big is because the yarn that we're using is quite thick, but the good news is that it makes them much easier to handle and it makes them much quicker to see your progress and much quicker to finish, which is very good news for all the impatient knitters among you. The other material that you'll need is of course your yarn, and we recommend using the Wool and the Gang Jersey Be Good yarn, which is made from up-cycled T-Shirt yarn, we work very closely with the recycling factory to make sure that T-Shirt yarn scraps which would otherwise end up as landfill, get put into lovely little cones like this and woven into something beautiful by our customers. This is a 500 gram cone and we recommend using that amount. Aside from the sustainable credentials, the reason we really like working with Jersey is because it's really nice and durable, it's really good for accessories which we are making today, and it's also really good for the summer months when you don't necessarily want to be making safo wool. Then the final piece of our puzzle is you're darning needle, and this you're just going to use at the very end to basically sew your pieces together, and then you weave in your ends that there's no trace of any loose bits and pieces of Jersey and all that you really need to tidy. If you find that you can't get hold of a cone of Jersey yarn anywhere, you can of course make it yourself. Down in the resources below, you'll find a link to the tutorial and it's basically cutting up T-Shirts yourself to do it by hand, it will take quite a long time, but that's definitely another way to do it. If you find you have other yarns lying around which aren't Jersey, you're still keen to try this, go ahead, go for it, try it and slightly thicker yarns we recommend that. However, please note because of the stretch and the durability of the Jersey, you'll get a nice durable clutch which you probably you're going to be the floppy one with loop, so just be aware of them. 2. All the Stitches You Need: Okay guys, we're ready to start. We've got our needles and we've got our yarn and usually with cones of jersey, we just put it out from the center. So just give yourself a little room and we're going to do something called a slipknot and that is the very first knot that you put onto your needle. So, first, you get a length of yarn and you just hold it like that. You take your left hand and you just lift it up, create a loop and put it down and hold it, pinch under the thumb of your right hand. Then you put your fingers through and just grab the short end, tighten and like magic you have a slipknot. So, your slipknot is very very important because that actually is the very first stitch on your needle. So what you do once you've made it, you just slip it right on to your needle, keep it nice and loose for now. Your next stitch on your needles, you just need to take the right needle and you insert it through the loop behind your left needle like that and then you make sure that you take the piece of yarn which is still attached to your cone, not the short yarn and you take it around that right hand needle like that. You push that right hand needle down nice and slow then you loop and scoop that yarn up, pull the stitch out, twist a little and just hook it over your left needle. You give a little tack on the yarn and as if by magic, you have two stitches on your needle. So now we're going to do all the rest of your stitches, which are done in a slightly different but almost identical way. Please remember it makes life a lot easier if you keep all of your stitches close to the top of your needle. So, once again, you take your right hand needle, but instead of going through the loop, this time you go in between the stitches like this. Then exactly as you did before, you take the length of your yarn which is still attached to your cone and you loop it around that right hand needle, you push that needle down, scoop up your stitch, give it a little tack, twist it and loop it onto your left hand needle. tack at the jersey on again and there you have three stitches on your needle and then you continue exactly like that for the other 17 stitches until you have 20 in total on your needle. This method is called the cable cast on, and the reason we like it is because it gives a nice finished edge. Now hopefully, you should have 20 stitches on your needle. Let us count 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18 and 20. So, for your next step, we're going to start knitting this row of stitches and creating the fabric of your clutch. So position your stitches nice and close to the top of your left hand needle. The very first step is something called slipping your stitch and that's basically lifting the stitch from the left hand needle to the right, but we have to do it in a particular way and that way is called parole wise. So, the way that you do that you take your right hand needle and you insert it down and under and then you just lift it over the left hand needle onto the right. So now, you have your yarn in front in between your needles and what you need to do is lift it to the back. So, just take it like that, lift it up and to the back, and just give it a little tack. Now what you're going to do is knit the stitch and this is pretty much identical to the technique you were using to cast on. So you've basically done this before. So you take your right needle, put it underneath and into the loop and behind your left hand needle and you lift the yarn over like that, push it down, scoop it up, lift over onto your right needle. So, now you'll have two stitches on your right hand needle and what we're going to do next is purl these two stitches. First step is to move your yarn to the front and in-between your needles, so just put it around like that and give it a little tack. So, the purl stitch is kind of like the knit stitch, it's just a little bit inverted. So you just take your right hand needle and you point it downwards and through the stitch on your left hand needle and then you grab your yarn, you just loop it over like that and then you push your right hand needle, scoop up the yarn and lift it over the left. We're going to do that again. Point it downwards in front of the left hand needle, put your yarn over, push it down, scoop it up and lift it over. Great. So now we have four stitches on the right hand side and now we're going to do two knit stitches. So I'm going to move the yarn back behind the needles, then I scooch the stitches up the left hand needle a little and we're going to do that same stitch we did just before. So, you go right needle under, yarn around, push it down, scoop it up and lift it over and one more. You basically just continue that, two purl, two knit alternating for the rest of the row. So now, we're just doing the last two stitches, transferring them from your left needle to your right. Now, you'll see that your left needle is completely empty and your right needle has all the stitches but actually we therefore need to swap hands and then we do the whole process again but just the reverse. So once again, we're going to slip that top stitch but whereas last time you slip stitch purl wise by facing downwards with your right needle, now we're going to slip it knit wise by facing up with your needle. So, you just slip it off like that and that's it. So now that we've slipped that stitch knit twice onto our right needle, we are going to purl stitch the first stitch. So, we take our yarn, bring it to the front in between the two needles, put the needle through the stitch in front of the left one pointing downwards, yarn over, scoop it up and lift it over. Then we're going to put the yarn behind and actually do two knit stitches, and we just continue that right to the end of the row, knit two, purl two. So, let's say you're in the middle of your knitting and then you thought actually I'd quite like some tea. So then you had some tea, you watch some TV and then you thought let me start knitting again and then you look at your knitting and you think oh gosh, I don't know where I was. You don't know whether it's a knit or purl. We have the solution. So, what you need to do is take a look at what is on your left needle and as you can see here, the stitches do not all look the same. See how these two have these big lumps on and these two don't have lump on and these two do have lumps on and these guys don't, these do. That's because these two on your left needle are purl stitches. So purl stitches are the lumpy ones and the knit stitches on your left hand needle don't have these lumps. So, because we're alternating, whenever you see on your left needle, you need to do the opposite on your right. So in this case, you see two lumps, so two purl stitches on your left, so you know that what you have to do with your right is knit stitch these two. In the same way you see no lumps here, so those are two knit stitches on your left needle, so that means with your right needle, you need to make sure that you purl those two because they're the opposite. We got some little lumps here on the left hand needle, so we know we're dealing with two purl stitches, which means we know that the right hand needle has two knit both of these. What do we do when we knit? We move the yarn to the back like this. So, you take your right needle and because we're knitting these two lumpy purl stitches, put our needle through this stitch and behind the left hand needle just yarn over like normal, scoop it up and lift it over, and then one more. To double-check that we're in the right place, you can see here we've got two knit stitches, so without any of these lumps on the left hand needle, so we know we need to purl stitch with the right. So, we bring our yarn forward again, bring the needle down, yarn over, and one more. That's it, that's how you find your place. Here's one we made earlier. So, you'll see now that this is the pattern that the double moss stitch gives. Its lovely. You'll see now this edge is the reason we were doing all of those slip stitches. It's just really good practice because it creates a really really neat and tidy finished edge. So, we recommend that your P should measure about 16 inches which is approximately 64 rows. 3. Making the Clutch: Now, that you've finished the body of your tender loving kludge, what we need to do now is get all of these stitches off your left needle with a nice and neat edge like at the sites. That process is called casting off. Let us begin. So, just move your stitches up your left needle to make life easier and for step one, we're going to do a very familiar step which is sniffing the stitch neat wise. So, like you've done many times before now, just take your right hand needle, put it underneath the left hand needle through the stitch, lift it off the left needle, keep it on the right and pull that a little tighter. So you'll have one stitch on the right hand needle. Then what you need to do is knit that second stitch. So, what you do is go under, put yarn over, skip it under and lift it over like that. Then you'll see you have two stitches on the right hand needle and what you need to do then is just lift that bottom stitch over the top stitch and off and that's it, leaving just one stitch on your right hand needle. Then in order to get to repeat that, you need obviously another stitch on your right needle. So, you just need to knit that next stitch, skip it and lift it, so you again have two on your right hand needle and then again just lift that bottom one over the top one, over the needle and off. Knit the next edge on your left hand needle, scoop and lift. So when you've done a few using your finger, you can then progress on to just using your needle like this, just get underneath that bottom stitch, lift it over that top stitch and off and carry on until the end of the row. So now you're down to your last two stitches. So, you still need to do as you were, knit that last stitch on your left needle to get it onto your right and then you need to lift this bottom one over again. So, you're left with just one stitch on your needle and then you need to cut your yarn, make it about an arm's length and then all you need to do is simply pull and just pull that loop higher and higher and you'll see that the yarn comes with it. So, now we are ready to assemble your clutch. First things first, we need to find that cast off edge because that's actually the decorative edge. You'll see this is your cast off edge. It looks very nice and the reason we want to identify that because we want that to be on the outside of the flat of your kludge. So, now we found that and we know that once it's folded over, that will be on the outside of the flap of our kludge. So then we know that this will be the inside. So, what we want to do is just it can be relatively approximate. We just want to kind of find, fold it over to just over halfway to there and then just so you can see what it will look like, just fold over what will be the flap and just checking like the spacing here and how much of the bottom of the clutch you can see. Now, what we have to do is seam these edges or close these edges up here so that we can actually use it as a bag and you'll now see how important it was that we very neatly, with all those slip stitches, finished off the edges of our bag because you actually see this and then it's very tidy. For this step, you need to get out the donning needle and you need to take an arm's length of jersey and just thread it in. Its little fiddly but it will fit. So we're ready to start sewing up the sides of your kludge. So, you take your donning needle and you just put it through your fabric like that. Pull the jersey on all the way through but leave a little length and we'll deal with that at the end, we're going to weave it in. Then you just go back in the next stitch the other way. Pull and then we just keep zigzagging through to the bottom of your kludge and you're probably wondering how to finish this off. So what you need to do is put your needle actually inside the bag like this, like this. Once you've pulled your thread through, just turn it inside out because what we're going to do is just weave it back over the seam you just made. There is not a particular order in which you need to do this and probably once you roved it in for about three inches, that's probably enough. So, just to be extra safe on your last little stitch, it's a good idea just to make a simple knot and that's it. Now you can cut it, turn the bag inside out and it looks beautiful. With one side done, we're just going to do exactly the same thing on the other side. With both sides of your kludge neatly seamed together and closed, the last things we have to do is get rid of all of these little loose bits and we do that by weaving it in basically the same way as you wove in the ends of the fabric when you seamed the side of the kludge. As an example, I'm going to weave in this little length of jersey here. Because it's so close to the side of the kludge bag, I think the best thing to do is actually hide it on the inside. So, once again we're going to turn the kludge bag inside out and we're just going to do exactly like you did before when you were weaving in and hiding the ends of your seeming yarn. Then, like you did last time, it's best just to tie a little knot in the end to keep a radius here and then you can just chop these bits off really close to the knot. So once you've done both sides of your klugde, you need to get rid of this long thread which was your casting off thread at the top of your kludge. The way we're going to do that is we're going to just weave it in exactly like you've done before but just on the inside of the flat just following this little row here, just weaving in and out of it. What this will do is hide it and really secure as well. So, when you get to kind of halfwayish, you can just tie a little knot on your final loop and then you chop this a little bit off and you're done. Here we are, well done. Here's your 10 to 11 kludge and it's nice and easy and it looks pretty professional and you should make it. 4. More Creative Classes on Skillshare: [MUSIC]