My sister gifted me a ball of the wonderful Gepard Puno yarn in Hunter Green. It’s Italian, consisting mostly of baby alpaca and blended with merino wool and polyamide. It’s chunky but squishy, with about 10wpi.

It’s super soft and pretty, and I’m thinking it’ll shine best in an overshot project as pattern yarn.

Weaving

Warped a 2.9m warp of 10cm width on the 10dpi heddle, with Stylecraft ReCreate recycled yarn in Ecru as warp, and planning on making 4 pouches, sized to hold glasses / sunglasses / mobile phones.

Pouch 1: Going with Ecru in the background weft and doing a diamond pattern with the Gepard Puno. I originally wanted to replicate a pattern that’s on my shower curtain, but I had to adjust it to reduce the length of the floats. Relieved to see that each pattern pick only needs 1 repeat in this setup - it’s nicely balanced! Put the pattern into the middle instead of slightly offset for an offset opening at the back… will need to make sure glasses/phones can still be easily put in/taken out.

Pouch 2: Going with Avocado as background weft and doing an inca inspired pattern, repeated twice. The pattern is offset this time so the pouch’s opening will be more offset to make it easier to take things out of it. Not entirely sure a non-Ecru background weft looks good, and the pattern doesn’t pop as much at this small scale.

Pouch 3: Going with Blush as background weft and a heart pattern. I like this a lot better than the Avocado in terms of how the background weft looks. The hearts turn out neat!

Pouch 4: Back to Ecru as background weft, and choosing the rope pattern (undulating twill) for the last pouch (still have about 15 other designs that I could have tried, but only chose my favourites). I love weaving with the Ecru - makes such a wonderful background, and this pattern’s longer floats show off Gepard Puno’s softness better.

Had some leftover warp - trying out my new-ish Charcoal in combo with the lighter Smoke and I like the combination with the Ecru warp. Aimed to make a coaster but it got a bit longer since I wanted to use as much of the warp as possible. Yay!

The wet finish deprived the Gepard Puno of some of its baby alpaca fibres it seemed, but mainly in the tails. Shrinkage was minimal - 0.5cm for 2 of them, 1cm for the first one.

Sewing

I’ve sewn together pouch 4 first. Since the piece was still quite long I made the seems thicker (4cm on each side), tucking in the shortened fringes so they’re hidden in the seams. I secured the seams by sewing loops of the weft together, even at the edges. Then I sewed together the long edges with a simple stitch, using the long leftovers of the seam threads. I went along the long sides twice for extra strength and made extra securing stitches around the opening at the back. I decided to do no overlap at the opening after all so it can be opened more easily (simply by folding). Sewing the long edges this way took away somewhat from the space inside the pouch and automatically gave it volume, but the seams seem more protected. I am easily able to put my sunglasses inside, and even managed to squeeze my phone in, though it’s a bit on the tight side.

For the next pouch, I might do a tiny overlap at the opening, and perhaps try sewing the long seams on the outside rather than on the inside.

After some reflection, I abandoned that plan and instead made wider seams so the pouch is shorter. I suspect even a small overlap would make it very difficult to remove & insert the glasses, especially bigger ones. And doing the long seams on the inside makes the pouch a more snug fit for glasses and protects them. Pouch 3 was thus sewn together and I’m very pleased with the outcome, both in functionality and looks.

I’ve sewn the remaining two in the same fashion.