Red Heart Boutique Sashay Yarn Demo

On Saturday I did a Demo at Michaels Arts and Crafts in Burlington, WA.  It was a Demo of knitting and crocheting with Red Heart Boutique Sashay Yarn .  I spent the week prior playing with this fun craft yarn.  The thing that I loved most about this yarn is that some of the work is already done for you so it makes for quick and easy projects, that even a beginner can do.  The yarn is actually not your normal yarn, it is really strips of  a lace/net material that you can knit, crochet, or craft with.  I came up with a ton of ideas for this yarn, these are samples that I came up this last week.

This is a scarf I made with Sashay(Waltz).  I made this by doing rows of
5 SC, but picking up every other loop.  Skipping a loop, made it more full
and I still got a nice length with only one ball.   I timed myself to see how
quick it really is to make a scarf with this yarn, it took 2hrs and 13 min.,
pretty fast!

I made this scarf with Sashay(Jive).  This scarf was made by knitting
rows of 6.  This time I picked up and knitted every loop across the top
of  the yarn, rather than every other.  The ruffles were less dense and I
was able to get a longer scarf from one ball, making a long skinny scarf.
This scarf was 21 inches longer than the above crocheted one, and still
only took me 3 hrs and 17 min to knit, not bad!

This is the the finished scarf, that I mentioned in my last post that I
was working on.  This one is not Sashay, it is Premier Yarns Starbella.
It is similar to Sashay, except the loops of the netting are bigger, but
it is used in the same way, by knitting or crocheting the loops across
the top of the material.  I spent another 30 minutes, working the rest of
the ball, and finished this scarf.  It has a nice fun look, and I love the
bright colors that Starbella has to offer.

After Making the scarves, I decided to do some experimenting.  I love to play with texture and stitches, some of my best project ideas have come from doing just that!  These are some of the other things I came up with using this self ruffling yarn.

Knitting every row with this yarn causes the ruffles to go in a spiral pattern, so I wanted to see the effect if worked in
Stockinette stitch (knit 1 row, purl 1 row and repeat).  The result was this really cool material, with one flat side that shows the  V's of Stockinette and one ruffled side, where the ruffles lay in a zig zag pattern rather than spiraled.

Red Heart had instructions for making a bloom by first crocheting a base and then making a chain of Sashay and sewing it in a spiral pattern onto the base.  This is the what my bloom looks like, front and back following their instruction.  It was pretty quick to make, nice and full and had a base which makes it easy to attach to a garment or pin.

I thought it might be easier to make a bloom by just crocheting in the round Rather than making a base and sewing so I made this swatch by crocheting in the round.  I did rows of 12 SC in the round, making a swatch that is 6 SC wide when laid flat.  And it looked like flower to me and was a little quicker than making a base and sewing.

These are some flowers I made by crocheting 2 rows of  Sashay in the round.  The blue one is a small flower attached to a hairpin. I found that if I folded the Sashay in half and picked up both layers of loops just below the fold I was able to easily make a mini flower.  These flowers only took minutes to make!

This kind of self ruffling craft yarn is great for adding ruffles to a knit and crochet projects, so I made some swatches of that to see how it works.  I found the easiest way to work it in is to pick up a loop of Sashay, work the stitch with regular yarn as usual, then pass the Sashay loop over the stitch. 

Sashay yarn worked into a knitted swatch.

Sashay yarn worked into a crocheted swatch.

I could see this yarn being used in other craft projects besides knitting and crochet.  I thought it might be ideal to use to add ruffle trim to sewing projects and paper craft projects such as card making.  I ran out of time before my demo to make up any sewing samples, but I did manage to whip together this little butterfly that I thought would make a cute card.  

To make this card, I cut a length of Sashay yarn and folded it inward, so the ends meet in the middle.  Next I secured the ends in place and cinched the center by wrapping some thread around the middle and tying a knot.  After making the simple bow with Sashay, I took some black yarn and made a butterfly body by making a short crocheted chain, turning and working a SC in each chain.  The beginning tail and ending tail ended up on the same end so I trimmed them and left them to use as butterfly antennas.  I glued the pieces to a piece of card stock.   From start to finish it took me about 10 minutes to make, plus drying time for the glue.  Pretty quick and easy.

As you can see I had a lot of fun playing with Red Heart Boutique Sashay.  And I had a good time meeting some new people and sharing my projects at my Michaels Demo.

This is me at my Demo table modeling my scarf and matching flower hairpin I made.

This is me Demonstrating How I made the crocheted Sashay Scarf.

This was my first in store Demo at Michaels Arts and Crafts.  I had fun and look forward to the next one!