Fastening long floats for invisible stranding--alternatives to the STUART ladderback

Invisible stranding in color knitting via ladderbacks has been the topic recently.

• First, an intro to the STUART ladderback method
• Next, an (adorable!) skeleton hat showing STUART in action
• Then, in the previous post, a hot water bottle cover featuring a modification: using pinstripes to firmly fasten down the floats of a long ladderback, row-by-row.

Today's post goes shows alternatives to STUART. STUART regulates tension: it's a way of breaking up long floats by temporarily parking them on the fabric face. But, if you are an expert knitter (or just a bold one) you could simply knit super-long floats without any tension-regulation help, then tack down your super-long floats afterward, as part of the finishing process.

Today's post does not talk about how to KNIT those floats--it simply shows you three methods for TACKING DOWN those long floats as part of the finishing process.

Alternative #1:  TACKING also called FREE-FORM PINSTRIPE

(column-in-a-column, similar to the quilter's trick of "stitch in the ditch")

The previous post combined STUART with  pinstripes : it showed the catchment column re-hooked as a PURL column, and then a pinstripe was worked up this purl column to tack the long float in place, row-by-row.

However, It is actually possible to work a "free-form pinstripe" right up the middle of a KNIT column, and use that to catch the floats on every row. Despite that pinstripes are ordinarily worked into a purl column, a purl column is not actually required. Instead, you can work a pinstripe in a different way--worked right through an knit column--and tack long floats in that manner.Working a pinstripe through a knit column is called "tacking,"or "free-form pinstripe." It is the knitter's analog to the quilter's trick of "stitch in the ditch."

Here is a diagram of what is going on.

tacking, also called free-form pinstriping, in action

Here's a close-up of what's going on:

close-up of tacking

The blue stars point at the blue-dotted stretches: these are the running yarn behind the slip stitches.  It is these running yarns which hold the floats (red) against the back surface of the fabric. Naturally, the slip stitches and the background stitches would be the same color in real life (photo below). I just drew the slip stitches white and the background stitches gray so you could see what is going on.

Below is a photo of this process in real life, using tacking yarn of the same weight as the background stitches. 

Column-in-a-column free-form pinstriping, in real life. Blue colorization highlights left arms of the original stitch, green highlights right arms,  red highlights the free-form pinstripe-tacking

You can see the white free-form pinstripe forming a column-in-a-column on the fabric surface. The original knit column is split in half by the tacking.  The left arm of the original column (colorized blue) frames the centered free-form pinstripe (colorized red) while the right arm of the original column (colorized green) frames the right. The bottom part of the photo shows the free-form pinstripe in its un-colorized state. As you see, it's subtle, even on extreme closeup.

Here's the back view. The white free-form pinstripe tacks the long floats (black) to the back surface of the fabric on every row.

The white column-in-a-column free-form pinstripe, as seen from the back, used to tack down long black floats on a white background

Are you concerned that this column-in-a-column tacking will show or be bulky? If worked in a thick yarn, as here, I'm not going to lie, the answer is yes. You can both see and feel the tacking column. In fact, if you use this trick, then as the knitter who made the thing, you will never be able un-see it.

However, this does not mean others will see it. See, you have to convince yourself, just like magicians do, that despite how obvious this looks to you, it is invisible to others. "Magic tricks" work because people only SEE what we are LOOKING for. This trick doesn't disturb the fabric so much that it draws attention to itself. Despite knowing something was up, none of the knitters in a class I taught caught this on first sight, and only two out of 10 noticed after being allowed to handle the original sample and look at the outside. Naturally, once they could look at the inside, once the matter was brought to their attention, it was head-slappingly obvious. However, if eight out of ten knitters did not notice despite handling the material, I believe you may rest easy.

Naturally, the thicker the original yarn, the less likely this trick is to escape unnoticed, but the photographed sample was knit in worsted weight, the tacking was worked in that same weight and the whole business still slipped by some fairly knowledgeable folks. 

Geek note #1: ALMOST INVISIBLE IN A THINNER YARN

 It's possible to work this trick with matching yarn which is much thinner. The easiest way to get a perfect match in thinner yarn is split out a ply. A future post will show yarn-splitting, and a link will be placed here at that time. This trick of using thinner yarn makes tacking almost invisible.

Geek note #2: POLYESTER SEWING THREAD
Tacking with a thinner ply is almost invisible, but tacking with sewing thread is utterly and truly invisible. Even as the person who made this, you can't find it. With this trick there's only a photo of the back because there is literally nothing to show on the front. 

Ordinary black polyester sewing thread used instead of yarn to tack, where the surface fabric is black (in other words, what is being caught here is long white floats behind a black background).  The thread is invisible on the front--which is why the only photo is of the back!

But, if this is so invisible, why is this not the main method for tacking down long floats? Couple of reasons. First, tension is more of an issue with thread than with yarn. Second, sewing thread is so strong that, with wear, it might cut the yarn fibers, especially cashmere, merino or other soft fibers. But the main problem is that sewing thread is slippery and hard to slip-stitch with. It's frustrating to lose the thread-loop and have to start all over again (and again, and again). You can (somewhat) mitigate losing the loop by working with a small latch hook, like a knit picker, but the tension problems really arise from trying to control the loop in the first place. A truly invisible as this is, it's waaay pickier than working with yarn, and working with yarn is plenty picky already.

Geek note #3: The photos and diagrams above show the float running free, then tacked down via a free-form pinstripe.  However, if you find that your floats are a bit loose, you could ladderback the floats and THEN tack them down. In other words, you don't have to STUART-ized your long floats (slip and park, the release them)  to afterward form a ladderback, you can actually simply ladderback ANY long floats which were knit with enough slack to avoid puckering (the trick, however, is to knit looooong floats at a perfect tension--which is quite a trick!)

Geek note #4: You could try running the free-form pinstripe tacking BETWEEN the columns, but I think this is more obvious--it appears as an extra column inserted into the fabric, per below photo. However, this might be a trick to try if tacking near some shaping, where columns come and go due to increasing or decreasing.

...appears as an extra column inserted into the fabric...

Alternative #2 DUPLICATE STITCH

Rather than tacking in continuous columns, you could instead use duplicate stitches to tack the floats, either a) every-row, or b) in bunches. If you do this trick, then, like all duplicate stitching, be sure to duplicate stitch with a dull-pointed needle so you don't pierce the floats or the fabric stitches on the outside, but actually work over the fabric-surface stitches, as well as the floats.

a) Every row

If you work a duplicate stitch every row to fasten down the floats, ask yourself why you aren't freeform pinstripe-tacking instead? Pinstripe-tacking is worked with a running yarn (faster) while sewing (which is what duplicate stitch actually is) is worked with a cut-length (slower). However, perhaps you prefer sewing duplicate stitch to slip-stitching a column with a crochet hook? If so, carry on...  

b) Bunches

If you gather the floats into bunches on the back, you'd only have to duplicate stitch every few rows.  This works best if you only have a very few rows of floats to gather up (two floats? three?)

And think how neat it would be if you actually used the duplicate stitch to not only tack the floats, but as a pretty little highlight-stitch in a completely different color--a dot along a Fair-Isle row, for example, thus killing two birds with one stone. This little samples hints at the possibilities.

Below shows the sample front and back after knitting, but before tying the long floats down with a duplicate stitch.

Below shows the front and back during the duplicate stitch process.

The obvious downside to duplicate stitching is more ends to work in. However, in the above sample, ends are minimized by having the yarn skim from place to place. Which leads to a final trick...

Alternative #3: SKIMMING

Simply skim down super-long floats without the duplicate-stitch trick. For skimming, thread a sharp sewing needle with a sock yarn or a split-out ply in a matching color, then skim though the floats and the fabric back. This is just like skimming in ends. It doesn't look that great on the back (but it doesn't look worse than the duplicate stitch, either). Skimming is a straightforward way of fastening down super long floats invisibly: much better than leaving super-long floats on the fabric back.

--TK

You have been reading TECHknitting blog on invisible stranding in knitting, part 4: alternatives to STUART--tacking down super-long floats as part of the finishing process.