Molly's Sketchbook: Spring Herringbone Throw

The multi-purpose Herringbone Throw was born out of love for an amazing fabric, the super soft Ecrulet Herringbone. One hundred percent cotton, it's both cozy and breathable, perfect for warm weather breezes and chills. I love its color, drape, and feel. I even love its selvages!  To show off this very special fabric I originally planned to make a very simple scarf with untouched selvages and fringed ends secured by a twinkle of sparkling gold thread. 

I stuck with this plan, keeping the fabric's 45 inch width and cutting it an extra long 90 inches. Once I was done I really loved my creation, but I wasn’t so sure it was a scarf! Everyone at the Purl Bee seemed to have a different idea of how they would use it.  I envisioned taking it to the beach as an all-in-one cover-up, towel and beach blanket. Page imagined curling up by a campfire with it. And Joelle wanted to wear it as a generously oversized wrap.

In the end we decided that we loved it, whatever it was! For now, I think it will live on my couch, keeping me warm on cool spring nights until summer, when I’ll take it to the beach!

Materials

To make one 44-inch by 88-inch throw:

• 2 1/2-yards of Ecrulet Herringbone in Grey
• Sajou Metallic Thread in gold

Cutting and Making the Fringe

Cut each of the raw edges using a rotary cutter, from selvage to selvage. Try to make these cuts as straight to the selvage as possible.

To make the fringe pull threads one by one from one of the cut edges. As you keep pulling the threads one you'll notice that your initial cut probably wasn't 100% straight and thus the fringe will be different lengths along the cut. Pull the threads until the fringe is at least 1/2-inch long at the shortest section.

Lining up a rotary cutting ruler at the start of the fringe and using a rotary cutter, cut the fringe to be 1/2-inch along the entire length of the cut edge.

Repeat for the second cut side of the fabric so that both sides have a neat 1/2-inch edging of fringe.

Sewing 

Using the gold thread and a small zig zag stitch sew across the entire length of one of the fringed edges, just along the edge of the fabric, where the fringe begins. Backstitch at the beginning and end of this row. Go slowly to make sure that you aren't sewing into the fringe itself. To achieve this you may have to brush the fringe out of the path of the needle a few times.

Sew another row of zig zag stitches 1/4-inch in from the first. And then sew a third row of zig zag stitches 1/4 from the previous row. Backstitch at the beginning and end of these rows.

Repeat for the second fringed side and you're all done!