Finish off knitting with a hand-sewn hem--and no blood-letting.
Photo courtesy of stevendepolo
You can finish off knitting three ways. If you want to bind off or cast off, just knit the first two stitches, insert your left needle into the first stitch you knitted and pull it over the second stitch so the first stitch is wrapped around the neck of the second stitch. Repeat: knit another stitch, pull the other stitch over it. When you reach the last stitch, cut the yarn so you leave a long tail and yank the tail up through the last stitch. If you already know all that but fear you’ll wreck your sweater by mis-weaving in ends, or blocking or seaming it wrong, stay tuned. The third way? Kill it dead.
Who would want to kill their sweater on purpose? Nobody. But get in a big old hurry and rush through the finishing and you just might kill it. How?
Blocking wrong can wreck your sweater.
Some folks heat up their iron and press the tar out of their acrylic sweater. Surprise! Acrylic melts. Might gunk up your iron real bad too.
If your sweater is knit in pieces, block them first, then seam them. If you soak your pieces and haul them willy-nilly out of the water, you can stretch your knitting, poke a hole in it or break the yarn. Support the weight like you would a newborn baby. It’s just as tender.
If you use hot soapy water and a shock of cold rinse water on non-superwash wool, your sweater can shrink or felt in patches. Not good.
If you get past the soaking/rinsing part, pressed out the excess water and spread the pieces out to dry, you can still wreck it. Pay no attention to what size or shape they end up so they’re nice and crooked. If your fronts and back are different lengths, they won’t match up when you join them. Or one sleeve could be longer than the other. Use pins that hate water so your sweater gets rust stains before it dries. Nice, eh?
You could pin your pieces out the right size, spritz with water until damp and let dry. Or apply gobs of steam with an iron held just above the knit fabric. Then leave the room. Your dog or cat will enjoy this marvelous new toy you spread out just for him or her.
How and when do you weave in yarn ends?
You can weave in ends before blocking, or some folks–especially lace knitters–weave them in after. Some work yarn tails under bumps on the backside with a crochet hook or dull yarn needle. Don’t weave a red tail through a white area or it’ll show through. Slippery yarns will slide back out and might need nailed down with sewing thread or a teensy dot of glue. Not a gob. Yikes!
Some skim yarn ends through upper edges of bumps on the backside with a sharp needle. Let’s talk blood, shall we? If you prick your finger and bleed on your knitting, your spit might take it out. Be quick before it dries.
Time for seaming.
If you rush through this, I guarantee your sweater will look homemade in the worst way. Want to put your sweater in peril? Ignore tutorials for how to do mattress stitch. If you can’t make head or tails of that method, there are other ways you can seam. Some folks join pieces with a crochet chain stitch which can look very nice with the right size hook, yarn and tension–or all wrong. If you don’t redo a botched seam, trust me, everyone will know.
Some folks stitch sweater pieces together with a sewing machine. That can work if your presser foot doesn’t hook on your stitches–unless the fabric stretches as you go, which leaves a seam that’s all sea serpent humps. Ripping this bad boy out can be a nightmare.
Buttons or zippers add a whole new area fraught with disaster.
A poorly-anchored button can yank a yarn loop out so the button dangles. A zipper can catch in the knitting, distort or misalign the knitting, or ripple like a sea serpent’s humps (again).
If all this talk of potential disasters in finishing off knitting frightens you, you could always ball your project up, stuff it in a bag and hide it until you feel brave enough. Or hire someone who can finish off knitting–in the best way–so you wear your sweater with pride.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Here’s a great tutorial on steam blocking–with NO pins! Thank you, Annie Modesitt. (Not an affiliate link–just some love for teaching me combination knitting!)
I’ve grown up around sewing machines my whole life, so I know a little about them.
Me, too. I learned on my grandmother’s treadle machine, because my mother’s electric machine loved to create huge bird-nest snarls in the works. Only Mum could run it. I wore one Singer out during my decades as a tailor, and currently have a Europro, a commercial Juki and an ancient blind stitch hemmer.
Have you sewed hand-knits with yours? I have. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not so much. That’s how I know about ripping out messed up seams on knits.