I got up the courage to prepare and cut my sample steek this morning. I think it went well for a first time. Jared instructed us not to "go all precious" with our samples, so I tried hard not to. I do like things to look nice, though.
First, I put in a line of large basting stitches in a thinner yarn of a contrasting colour. This is the line you must not cross when you're crocheting on each side, and marks where the steek will be cut, down the centre of the centre line of stitches.
Here is the line of single crochet along one side of the steek. The rest of the swatch naturally folds back along the crochet edge. I crocheted across the inner half of the beige stitch and the outer half of the orange stitch just to the left of the centre line for each knit row.
In these next three pictures you can see the line of single crochet on either side of the blue basting line. The crochet pulls the centre orange line of stitches open to expose the 'ladder' of stitches, both orange and beige, that will be cut. You remove the basting yarn before cutting.
And finally, the steek is cut, and if this were a cardigan I'd be ready to pick up stitches along each edge and knit a button band, or sew in a zipper.
And in this last shot I'll show off how pretty the back looks, because I now have good technique when working with two colours!
That is nice to have all the short ends tucked under. I've only done this by machine sewing a couple of rows and then cutting between them, leaving a short fringe that has to be herringbone-stitched down. Nice!
ReplyDeleteJared pointed out that this method gives you a much more fluid edge than machine stitching, which isn't very flexible. Also, you don't need to sew this one down if you don't want to - once you pick up stitches for a button band the crocheted edge just stays folded back out of the way (plus by not sewing it down you can show its neatness off to knitting friends, says Jared).
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