Knitting in a world on fire how to knit banners with tricks for words & letters

Knitting words and letters is today's topic.  In a world on fire, banners have historically announced one's view on things, and, fair warning! I'm stating my political beliefs below. 

Obviously, politics aren't strictly necessary: a common example of banner-knitting is putting names on Christmas stockings. 

However, you have been warned! The top part of this post is technical, but the bottom part is, indeed, political.

What exactly is banner knitting?

Banner knitting is a constellation of tricks for knitting writing. Technically, it is a specialized form of knitting words, letters, or other thin designs, where narrow columns, curves and diagonals are set against a plain background, like words on a banner. With a plain background, there are no filler designs to carry the yarn past the end of the words, so the color knitting ends where the words do. 

All the rules for color-knitting apply to banner-knitting, but additional tricks smooth the fabric and balance the appearance of different colors between the words and the background--solving a problem sometimes called "color dominance" thus making words more legible. Also, banner-knitting employs special tricks for dealing with the tremendous number of tails generated while knitting, all coming to an end nearby one another. 

No longer are sayings restricted to cross stitch or embroidery. With these tricks, your words can efficiently be knitted, as well. 

So, what are these tricks?

Use wool

On a microscopic level wool is scaly and hairy. Two layers of wool held near one another will velcro together as the scales catch one another like barbs on a fish hook (and this can be encouraged by needle felting). Banner knitting has floats on the back, so the scales of wool help the floats and fabric surface nestle tight. Other fibers doesn't offer these advantages. Superwash wool is specifically treated to smooth the barbs, while non-wool fibers have no scales or barbs in the first place. Therefore, choose non-superwash wool for best results in banner-knitting.

Steeking

Purling back in color when knitting flat is quite the trick. Even working a front-side row, where you can see what every stitch is doing, it is challenging enough  to maintain tension while wrangling 2-color knitting. Purling back on a project ups that challenge significantly. It can be done. However, ordinary mortals such as myself usually choose to make life easier by working color knitting in the round. Each cc stitch can be seen as it is applied, and background puckering becomes immediately evident. For garments (hats, sweaters) knitting in the round is no problem. For flat objects (banners, pillow tops) this means steeking. So for flat work knit in-the-round, plan to leave plenty of stitches for the steek itself when laying out your design. 

Regarding steek how-to, the post just before this one showed how to needle-felt a steek, and a post coming up soon will show a different method of steeking called "double fold-back." Stay tuned.

Even tension 

A basic requirement is to knit the contrast color (cc) stitches of each letter to the same tension as the background so there's no puckering. How to knit evenly in color is a whole topic in itself and one to master before starting on banner knitting: links to some  tricks and hints. Yet, while  knitting evenly is  the basis for success, there is more.

Relative Yarn weight 

Contrast color (cc) yarn for words should be of at least the same weight as the main color (mc) of the background. But better is a cc yarn in a slightly heavier weight. You may have come across yarns described as being in the same weight category, yet one is thinner than the other. You would use the heavier for the words and the thinner for the background. 

The white yarn (Cascade 220) in noticeably thinner than the red (Pattons Classic). Both yarns are technically capable of being knit at 5 st/in. Yet in these two particular balls, the weight difference means cc red words (heavier yarn) on an mc white background (thinner yarn) would more legible than white words on red.

Splitting yarn 

Luckily, comparative anatomy among the yarn balls is not actually required to achieve this subtle weight difference. Instead, you can actually thicken and fluff up a cc yarn, even if it the same weight as the background yarn. This is done by splitting yarn into its component plies. When split plies are rejoined, the rejoined yarn is fluffier than before splitting. The letters are then knit with the splits both held together as one yarn, while the background is knit with unspilt yarn.

An example of how this works. The banner above is knit in 4-ply Norwegian long-staple DK wool (Peer Gynt and some old balls of Dale Garn Heilo). The light background is knit with yarn as it comes from the ball. But, the colorful letters are knit from yarn split and then rejoined. Specifically, the letter-yarn was divided into two 2-ply splits. Then, the two splits were held together and knit simultaneously, as if they were one yarn.  (Lower, there is a photo showing this.)

Two splits held together are fluffier than an unspilt yarn of the same weight, assuring that single cc stitches don't sink into the background to get lost. Yet, as the split yarn passes through the background fabric on its way to becoming a float across the back, the splits compress together to their original weight. In this way, splitting yields a fluffier yarn on the surface, yet doesn't affect tension or distort the fabric it passes through. 

Another advantage: splitting allows creating more colors by mixing. If you enlarge the banner-photo at the top of this post, every word in this banner has at least a few rows of color mixes. Another example from a different banner: in this letter "B," there are lots of color mixes to create an ombré effect.

Ombré created by working rows in different color splits. Where there is only one color, two splits of that color were used.

To be clear, ALL the word-stitches were knit with two splits held together: even the rows of pure colors. Otherwise, the the cc stitches would not be the same size. It's just that in mixes, two splits of different colors were held together, whereas in the pure colors, the two splits are the same color. 

A further advantage: as sketched below, splitting lets you loop together shorter lengths of yarn without having to splice them. Even if one ends up on the fabric surface, a loop-joint is pretty near invisible, so this trick lets you easily piece two shorter strands into one longer. 

looping shorter splits together instead of splicing

Looping is also the basis for two-part floats, discussed further, below.

Direction of knitting: V's up or down

For banner knitting, you can graph out words using free-handed letters, or use alphabet samplers. Problem is, graphs and samplers are laid out in little squares. Yet, as you know, stockinette stitches are little "v's," like downwards ▼ arrows. Sometimes, letters look better if the v's point up ▲ instead. Consider flipping your chart 180 degrees so the letters are upside down on the graph paper, then knitting words from top down. Below are some letters knit this way, a "Y," and another look at the "B" from above. 

In swatching, I liked how the upwards v's made a more graceful line on descending tails, and added little spiked helmets like "pickelhaube" as decorations above the line. 

Knitting smooth and even letters

Years of experimenting with narrow columns and diagonals yield two rules I rigidly follow: "lifting" and "continuous coverage."

Lifting over avoids "color dominance." First rule is, each yarn to be knit must be brought OVER the yarn already knit. When you go to knit a cc stitch, that yarn is lifted over the previous background stitch. Similarly, the yarn for a background stitch is lifted over the previous cc stitch. In this way, every stitch change starts off slightly raised on its leading edge, where the new yarn enters the fabric front face over the bump of the yarn not in use. 

This is another way of saying that "color dominance" has no place in banner-knitting: by lifting each yarn over the previous, both yarns are equally dominant. This consistency prevents contrast stitches sinking into the background or vice versa. 

The blue cc yarn has been lifted over the white background yarn. The next stitch will be knit with the blue cc yarn.

Note also how the blue cc yarn is composed of two 2-ply splits, held together and worked as one yarn, while the white background yarn is knit just as it comes out of the ball.

Lifting over is tedious. For one thing, you cannot knit "two handed," or even with a "fingerhut" yarn guide, as you might work ordinary color-knitting. Instead, you must continuously drop and pick up the new yarn.

In ordinary two-color knitting, lifting causes a further problem as well: it makes an awful tangle of the yarn as each pick-up winds each yarn further around the other. Yet, this turns out not be be much of a problem in banner knitting. 

Recall that there are no designs past where the writing ends. This means you need knit with strands only long enough to span across the words + tails: fairly short strands, really. Therefore, the easiest way is to cut each cc strand to approximately the correct length before the knitting of that row starts--experimentation will soon show you the length to cut. Now the cc is a loose strand, rather than being knit from a ball or bobbin. A loose strand untangles by simply pulling it out of the resulting bird's nest. Frequently pulling loose the cc strand makes lifting much easier that it first seems it would be.

Continuous coverage with cc yarn across the fabric back

 A second rule for successfully knitting narrow columns is to apply the yarn in continuous rows across the fabric, spanning the width of the writing. This is easiest to see from this back view, where the floats march away in even bands across the back.

...floats march away in even bands across the back.

It may be tempting to break the rule of continuous coverage to knit with some strand of yarn which happens to be dangling off the fabric-back in just the right place. And truly, for something like dotting  an "i'" (red circle) that would make sense. It may be tempting to double the yarn back and knit with its tail. And, perhaps, for the descending stem of a letter like "y" that would make sense too. But overall, the way to knit smooth letters is when the stitches in each row are applied with their own strands of yarn all the way along, all in the same direction, knit sequentially and lifted over: smooth bands of cc yarn spanning the fabric back continuously from one end of the writing to the other.

The combination of lifting and continuous coverage assures that each stitch enters and exits the fabric face at same angle and same direction, and with no yarn dominating -- important factors where the cc yarn rises to the surface in narrow columns, often only one stitch wide. 

Parking  

Using short-ish loose strands in continuous coverage makes for smooth letters, but the price is a lot of ends. Letting all those ends dangle on the fabric back during the knitting process makes an awful mess, unpleasant to knit. Therefore, a good trick is to temporarily park them on the fabric surface by holding them in a "parking column" to the fabric front. 

Below you see ends parked on the fabric surface as a banner is being knit. Some of the ends have already been worked in, (the words "on" and "FIRE,") while some remain on the surface awaiting their turn. For example, the tail ends of the blue strands used to knit the word "knitting" are parked several columns before and after the letters of that word, and where they rise to the surface, that is the parking column. As is evident, to knit the lower loop of the "g" with continuous coverage meant using quite short strands, as also for the upper parts of the "t's."  Similarly, continuous coverage for the tops of the letters "l" and "d" in the word "world" yields short strands parked on the surface three columns from where those letter-tops project above the lower-laying letters. 

The many ends controlled by being drawn to the surface in "parking columns."

In this closeup, the fabric is rotated clockwise (left side up) showing how parking results in a neat back, with the tails kept out of the way until it is time to fasten them down.

...neat bands of contrast colors marching across the back, one per row, with the tails pulled to the front fabric surface along a "parking column" located several stitches away from the beginning or end of the word

It's not just the fabric back that's neater, either. Because the tails are parked on the surface, it's easy to adjust the tension of stitches in first and last columns by tugging gently on the corresponding tail where it emerges. As you knit, it pays to periodically go back and adjust stitches which are obviously working loose. This begins the process of settling the stitches into their proper places before they have a chance to kink into a larger, looser shape. 

As to the how-to, there are two ways to park a cc strand at the beginning of a row. 

• When you first come to the parking-column, stop and insert the cc yarn, then knit the last few mc stitches, then commence with the cc. 
• Alternatively, let the cc tail dangle initially, then draw the tail to the surface in the parking-column after you've anchored the yarn by knitting a few cc stitches. 

Either way, you have to stop and park the cc strand between stitches of the mc background in the parking column, but with after-pulling you'll also need a crochet- or latch-hook.

Tails at row-end offer the same options.

• Park as you pass the ending parking-column.
• Alternatively, let the cc strand dangle temporarily, knit in background color a for a few stitches past the parking-column, then afterwards park the dangling cc end on the fabric surface by using a crochet hook to draw it through the parking-column.

One advantage to after-pulling is the opportunity to divert tails to a different row than the one in which they were knit, thus parking them out of the way of other tails ending nearby. 

Floats and float-tricks

Ends are not the only loose strands of yarn to deal with in banner knitting. There are also floats, and these can get quite long between words, or even between letters which face away from one another. There are two main ways to deal with floats, either as-you-go, or afterwards in the finishing process.

As-you go float control: Ladderback jacquard, STUART technique

Some knitters choose to twist together the main yarn and the cc yarn every few stitches along the length of the float. This trick certainly holds down the floats, but ups the probability of color-blips on the surface. The greater the contrast between the main and cc yarns, the more likely blips are to show. For this reason, interrupting a float half-way to wind it around the mc is not my favorite way to control long floats.

If you prefer to deal with long floats as-you-go, a better option is ladderback jacquard, and there are many ways of working this. My own take on ladderback is called STUART, which stands for "Slip Then Unhook And Rehook Twice." Because there is a whole post about this trick, I won't repeat all that here, but just show an example from the "world on fire" banner--here is that banner again for reference.

This ladderback is worked on the back of the letter "F" of the word "FIRE," bottom line of the banner. Some floats in this spot reach as far as 18 stitches. 

Controlling floats afterwards

One defining feature of banner-knitting is the tremendous number of ends which have to be worked in. This means there is a great deal of finishing to do. Because there is so much finishing, an alternative to as-you-go float control is to simply knit the floats loose and long, then deal with them, too, as part of the finishing process.

Tacking

A good trick for controlling long floats in the finishing process is called "tacking." I have already written about tacking, as well as the truly invisible variant of tacking, worked using sewing thread. Because the thread variation is, literally, invisible on the fabric front, I can only show the results on the fabric back.

Tacking with sewing thread--long floats between "I" and "R"

As you can imagine, tacking also works handsomely for dealing with ends, and there will be even more about tacking (including a video) in the very next post, a post devoted to a dozen ways of dealing with ends. 

.Two-part Floats

Another trick with floats is to knot and loop together ends. I call this trick "two-part floats," because it turns two sets of ends into one set of floats. In the "fire" banner, I used this where words of two different colors come together, such as between the phrases "in a" (green) and the word "world" (brown-gold). I could have worked these strands in as parked ends. However, these words are very close, so there would be many ends to deal with over a short a stretch of background fabric. Therefore, I thought knotting the ends into two-part floats the better option. 

It is a maxim of knitting that knots in garments are rarely a good choice because they create hard bumps, they want to come loose, and they want to work their way to the fabric surface. So, I would mostly save this trick for situations where the fabric back receives no wear: banners and cushion tops.   

Here is a schematic showing the idea.

Concept sketch, two-part floats

The graph represents the letters "a" and "w." Recall that the banner was knit with splits. This means knotting the tails together makes a loop. Accordingly, I knotted together each brown or gold tail from the letter "w." I then looped the green yarn through the brown/gold loop to knit the stitches of the green letter "a." In this case, the knitting was right-side up (downward pointing v's) so that the letters were worked <-- right to left. Of course, this sketch is only a conceptualization. The loops are on the fabric back while the letters are knit on the fabric front. 

As you see, the two words are not horizontally aligned, meaning, each brown/gold loop was knotted but left on the fabric back to wait for the appropriate round, when the green yarn would be looped through, then knit.*

Here is a closeup of the actual two-part floats on the back. Because this photo shows the fabric flipped over, the floats now appear to be going the other way.

Two-part floats IRL

I have to admit that even on a banner back, where there is no wear, knots in yarn want to undo. However, these particular knots cannot follow their inclination to pop open because I felted them shut. Using a single dry-felting needle, I stabbed each knot several times from various angles until the knots gave up trying and laid quietly. This also let me cut the knot-tails shorter than I otherwise could have. Read more about needle felting in the immediately preceding post. 

As a practical matter, two-part floats cannot really be secured by ladderback methods, but must be afterwards fastened. 

Afterward controlling long floats by needle felting

Another option for afterward controlling long floats, plain or two-part, is needle-felting them in place during the finishing process (video).

Touching up letters

In the previous post on needle felting, I also showed using a single felting needle to delicately touch up letter-stitches which don't connect on the diagonal. This is called surface felting, and here is an example of improving a knit letter "o" using this technique.

A white stitch arm (leftmost panel, red arrows) intervenes between two dark stitches at the top right. By inserting a single felting needle across the gap (middle panel, blue arrows) the gap is covered over by a few wisps of dark yarn. Now the diagonal is continuous (rightmost panel). More details about surface felting. 

* * *

OK! Woolen yarns have been selected. The letters have been charted and direction of the v's determined. Sufficient stitches have been left for the steek. The yarn for the letters has been split and rejoined. The letters have been legibly knit via lifting, with continuous coverage of cc strands along the fabric back. The many ends are either parked or worked into two-part floats. The ordinary floats have been fastened down as-you-go (ladderback) or await being fastened in the finishing process (tacking or needle-felting). The letters have been touched up to read in smooth diagonals. What now? 

This post is long enough already. As I hinted above, I'm putting off to the next post, the many ways to tidy up the back and work in ALL THOSE ENDS parked on the fabric front.

I will instead end this post by showing two further banners I've knit. Fair warning! In classic banner tradition, the subject is politics.

.Politics

In 2016, I wrote that that those who vote for Trump have no business taking free information, not even in a minor way like reading TECHknitting. I said...

If you believe in your heart that everyone must get along with no free help from you, you know in your heart that you need no free help from me. 

I like to think that, through the strength of their convictions, such readers have avoided TECHknitting these past nine years. However, if you're a Trump voter somehow still reading here, I address you directly.

By your vote...

Knitting for a world on fire

Many wrote to ask whether TECHknitting is going to shut down again like last time Trump was president. The answer is no. Sometimes I wonder who's out there reading, but wow! the emails and dm's on this subject have been more than on any single point of knitting technique, ever. I shall do as you ask, and not shut down this time. Disillusioned? Fuming? In disbelief? You are. I am. Yes. But this time, I plan to stay and hope you will too. 

Meanwhile, knit a banner. Hang it at the county fair. Enter it in a knitting competition. Wear it on your chest. Call it knitting for a world on fire.

And, if any Trump fans got down this far, here is my final banner. I assume you are setting up to bid me farewell, and I bid you the same. For the second time inside a decade, I say....

* * *

For the rest, lovely readers, I will see you next post, where the subject is working in all the many ends resulting from banner knitting. The techniques coming up also work on intarsia, picture-knitting and any other color-knitting techniques which leave a truly stupendous number of ends.

--TK

* The green was knit in splits also, and where those splits were multi-hued, the strand was fabricated by felting (spit-splicing) the two greens together at the apex of the loop. The overlapped part of the splice (multi-hued) mostly stayed parked on the fabric back. The brown/gold strands could not be spit-spliced into a loop because there's simply not enough room on such short ends to work that kind of splice, hence the necessity for the knot. 

* * *

Questions? Feedback? Contact me at 

Blue Sky  @techknitter.bsky.social or  

talk to me about this post on Ravelry TECHknitter forum

Needle felting tricks for knittersCutting Steeks, Fastening Floats & Touching up Color Knitting

Needle felting is a trick worked on dry fabric, which melds together woolen fiber. I say woolen because actual wool from the back of a living sheep really is the only fiber with with structure and body for this form of fabric-torture. And torture it is: as used in knitting, needle felting involves plunging very sharp barbed needles through fabric to draw wisps of the top layer down into the bottom layer. These wisps serve to bind the two layers together. 

In the art of hand-knitting, needle felting is often associated with the trick of steeking (cutting) a fabric.

Needle-felted steek, cut and folded back

It is also useful to hold floats from color-knitting onto the fabric-back.

Elephant with  floats needle-felted to fabric back

We'll get to these uses, and others as well, but first, the basics. 

Felting needles and pad

There are several types of felting needles. All feature a wickedly sharp point atop a barbed shaft. 

Close up of Clover brand needle felting tool needles. Click here to enlarge.

The barbs are arranged so they catch wisps of wool on the downward stroke only. When withdrawn, the barbs do not catch any wisps. When one layer of woolen fabric is felted to another below, the downward-drawn wisps are permanently parked in the lower layer. These wisps are what hold (felt) the two fabrics together. 

The safest way to use a felting tool is with a pad beneath. This may resemble a sponge or hairbrush. I find the hairbrush type more useful. Either way, the fabric to be felted is laid over the pad and the needles plunge through the fabric, then harmlessly into the pad rather than your fingers--less blood that way. Again, these needles are wicked sharp. They deserve the same respect as a sewing needle, or more, being barbed.

Felting needles are generally held in a pen- or knob-type holder, and you can usually select how many of the available holders to fill with needles. The felting pen above comes with three needles, as shown, but by unscrewing the case, you can choose to work with only one or two needles at a time. 

Wool

Real wool from the back of a live sheep gives the best results. This is because of wool's scaly nature at the microscopic level. 

Wool (left two images) compared with other fibers

With wear and pressure, scales of wool catch on one another, almost like the hooks of velcro. Since even the thinnest wisps of wool are scaly like this, pushing a wisp from a top layer into a bottom layer "velcro's" the layers together. This micrograph comparison of wool to other fibers--especially the synthetic fiber at far right--shows that pushing wisps of non-wool fiber into one another would not have the same catching effect because these other fibers have few or no scales to catch together. 

To further improve the "velcro" effect, steaming wool makes wool's scales open like a pine cone, causing further interlocking. So, needle felting through steamy fabric increases the effect, while steaming afterwards strengthens the bond between layers. Therefore, although needle felting is called a dry fabric technique (as opposed to its cousin, wet felting) a little water in the form of steam vapor really helps the process along. If you've tried needle felting before and haven't found much benefit, try again through a steamy fabric. There is a big difference. 

Needle felting is really only speeding up a process which would happen naturally as scaly woolen fibers rub on one another. However! Rubbing operates at one time scale and metal barbs at another. It would take a LOT of rubbing to create the felting which needles produce in a short time. Overdoing needle felting on hand knits can felt the fibers enough to undo stitch definition, just as wet felting does. Super-overdoing can actually cut right through the fabric, especially on thinner yarns. Felting thin yarn takes a LOT less plunging than the worsted weight I used in the demos below. Bottom line: proceed slowly, practice on a swatch. 

Needle felting steeks

A steek is a trick for slitting an opening (usually a front opening or armholes) into a garment which was knit circularly. In other words, a sweater might be knit in a tube right to the top, with the front and armhole openings being slit open afterwards with a pair of scissors. For more background, here's a link about steeking in general--the "why," plus, advantages and disadvantages. 

As you can imagine, the main trick with a steek is to prevent the knitting adjoining the cut from coming loose. This is where needle felting can contribute. 

The theory of needle felting steeks is that felted fabric cannot unravel. The practice is to felt the steek "bridge" thoroughly before cutting. After all these years, I'm still anxious about cutting hand knitting, so when felting, I also stabilize the edges of a steek with slip stitching. Also, I find it easier to felt "within the lines." However, you may be bolder. If you choose to felt without first slip stitching, skip down to here. 

Below photo shows slip stitching stabilization in progress, demoed on on a single color swatch. The work is done with a thin tough yarn called heel reinforcement yarn, and I chose red for visibility: usually you would use a color-matched yarn.  If heel reinforcement yarn is not at hand, consider  unspinning splits from a heavier yarn.

Using the crochet hook, a loop of red has just been drawn through to the front from the back of the fabric. 

A new loop is drawn through from the back, one stitch down along the same column. Now there are two loops around the barrel of the crochet hook. 

 

The new loop is drawn through the old. Now there is only one loop around the hook. 

The cycle repeats, each new loop being first drawn through from back to front one stitch down the same column, then through the old loop already on the crochet hook. In this way, both sides of the steek are reinforced with slip stitching. The red yarn starts and ends by drawing through a loop of yarn from back to front, then threading the tail over the bottom (or top) edge, through the loop. Pulling the tail tightens the loop over the edge. This permanently fastens down the tail, shown protruding, lower edge of above photo. 

Here is a color sample, slip stitched in the same way. In this case, I also ran a thin split of white yarn up the cut line as a marking. The distance between the center marking and the stabilizing slip stitches is dictated by your appetite for danger. I allowed two-and-a-half columns on either side of the cut-column. Fewer columns would be less bulky, but with a perhaps higher danger of pulling loose under stress.

Two-color knitting, front (left) and back, slip stitched in red, with a cut-line marked in white yarn.

With the steek reinforced, it is time to felt. If you skipped the part about reinforcement, this video is where you rejoin. 

Not shown on the video is the fact that, just before felting, the fabric was made soft and steamy with a shot-of-steam iron held several inches above the fabric. A hand-held steamer would work also, if you have one. 

Transcript. Here is the process of needle felting. This is the needle felter. And you see the (needle felting) pad below. You simply insert the needle felting tool into the fabric from the front, being careful to stay within the lines of the stabilization. You plunge the needle rapidly, back and forth through the fabric.

Despite being repeatedly plunged, the front fabric face features hardly any loss of stitch definition.

The same is not true of the back, which is very fuzzy. Right along the cut-line, it's almost hard to tell exactly which color is where, so melded have they become. To get to this point, the fabric was steamed several times and plunged repeatedly. Although most intense along the cut line, the felting does extend the entire width of the steek-bridge within the red stabilization. 

The cut comes next.

Transcript. Now we come the action shot of cutting the steek. I think it's very handy to have that white cutting line. If you look at the edge of the fabric, you can see how felted it is. And, here’s the inside. Even if I run my finger along here, no edges are coming loose. So this is a really solid and stable edge. A little bit of the fluff is coming out (including the cutting line!) but the edge itself is not disintegrating in any way.

After cutting open the steek, the next step is very often picking up stitches to work a border, or bands, or a sleeve. These stitches would be picked up outside of the slip stitching, along the red dotted line. (In this context, "outside" means NOT between the slip stitches and the cut edge.)

The pick up line is shown on the front of the fabric, one half-column away from the stabilizing stitches. However, it could be located  further. 

Needle felting in steeking has another use also, and that is, fastening down the cut flap. At left in below photo, the previously felted edge is pinned back. Once pinned, it was steamed and then needle felted. Pins removed, it has now bonded to the fabric-back in the folded-back position, at right in below photo. It has formed a "self facing."

Left: pinned. Right: pins removed, steamed and then felted in place, the flap has formed a "self facing." 
The felted-down flap is called a "facing," because it provides a smooth face on the inside of a garment opening. It is a "self-facing" because the fabric itself was folded over to form the facing. This is in contrast to an "applied facing," meaning a separate fabric is knitted to act as the facing.

Seen edge-on, the stabilizing stitches show in the fold. If this were to be the actual fabric edge in real life, I would have stabilized using color-matched yarn. 

By the way: if you had wanted to pick up stitches along the red dotted line of three photos back, you would have picked those up before folding and felting the self-facing. In this way, the facing would hide the picked up stitches. Also, the flap would fold back at the pick-up line, not at the slip-stitch line. 

How tight is the bond in the fold? When new-made, it could be ripped apart if you wanted to. In that sense, felting between layers is not as permanent as felting before cutting. However, with wear (and perhaps a bit more steaming) the fabric layers eventually meld so they're nearly impossible to rip apart. 

Needle felting color knitting

Fastening Floats

In color knitting, the contrasting color or background yarn not in use runs along the back of the fabric in loose strands called "floats." A great deal of knitting ingenuity has been devoted to different methods for fastening floats--especially long floats--to the back fabric face. However, needle felting isn't usually considered in this context. This oversight is a pity because needle felting can hold floats in place. In fact, if you think about it, holding down the floats is exactly what needle felting is doing when cutting steeks in color knitting.

This video compares two little elephants.* The one at left features felted floats, on the other, the floats are not yet felted. The longest float is 14 stitches. There are also 12's, 10's, and 8's. 

Transcript: This is the back of two little elephants. On this one (right), the floats are not felted down. I can easily insert the knitting needle under here, and if I stroke the back of the fabric, you can see that the floats are independent. These are some quite long floats: these are 14’s, this is a 12, these are 10’s and 8’s in here. On this side (left) the floats have been felted down. If I stroke the back of the (left) fabric, the floats don’t come up. They are attached, even this very long one here, this 14. And these 10’s. And this is the advantage of felting down long floats. If a kid put this little garment on, they wouldn’t catch their fingers and toes in it, like they would if this here (right, unfelted) was the finished product.

Flattening fabric

Here is a photo of the fronts after felting. Turned right-side out, the felted elephant is at right. Another advantage can now be seen: the contrasting color stitches of the felted elephant are much smoother against the background fabric than with the unfelted elephant at left. Felting has flattened the "fabric breaks," meaning, the little valleys along the edge of a linear color pattern where a column of cc stitches rises up just where the column of background stitches dives down. Compare particularly along the back columns, under the tails. 

Felting has also flattened out the fabric overall. Compare, for example, the felted elephant's stomach to that of the unfelted. Both elephants have been steam blocked. Yet even so, the felted one lies smoother against the background stitches. 

Right elephant has been flattened to the background fabric via needle felting. Click to enlarge

Flattening out works just as well for that one contrast color stitch which just persists in sticking up. Perhaps the yarn got thicker just at that one spot, perhaps the tension went off. Needle felting will tame its stubborn little ways so its lays flat.

 Correcting tension--loose floats 

Loose floats make for bad tension. Needle felting can tighten up that occasional loose float. Working from the front while tugging at the loose loop on the back, adjust the tension until it looks correct. Then, flip the fabric over. Finally, pull each loop into a nearby column.

Below left: double-pointed needle inserts under two loose loops on the elephant's back. Center: crochet hook draws the loose bottom loop into a nearby column. Right:crochet hook draws the loose top loop into a nearby column. 

Below left: knitting needles point to where the loops have been worked into the column. Right: the same column, lightly felted. Once felted, the loose loops meld into the column, never to come loose again. 

Surface-felting

This is a trick for improving diagonal lines in color knitting. When knitting a diagonal, the stitches may not join into a smooth line. Often, the arm of the neighboring stitch gets in the way. Result: two same-color stitches don't meet on the kitty-corner. 

Very delicate work with a single felting needle can solve this problem by surface-felting together the two stitches which ought to touch. Use a single needle to tease together a few wisps from each stitch in turn, until the stitches do join over the gap. This kind of touch-up especially helps make knitted alphabet letters more legible. 

Close-up of the dark letter "O" before, during, and after surface felting over an intervening white stitch-arm. Red arrows locate the intervening white arm. Blue arrows show the path of a single felting needle passing through two dark kitty-corner stitches as it travels towards upper left. In the rightmost photo, the dark yarn is fuzzed over the gap. The diagonal is now continuous. 

Improving the letter "O" via needle felting.

Left: gap in diagonal (red arrows). 

Center: inserting felting needle along fabric surface. 

Right: gap covered.

(I also fuzzed the O's  left corner somewhat.) 

And, speaking of alphabet letters, knitting letters and words is what the next post is about. (Warning--political!) 

--TK

Questions? Feedback? Contact me at 

Blue Sky  @techknitter.bsky.social or  

talk to me about this post on Ravelry TECHknitter forum

* Elephants adapted from a free Ravelry sock pattern designed by Jenny Lorefors.

Splitting (unspinning) Yarn thinner yarn for utility or color work

Two 2-ply splits from
a four-ply yarn

Thinner yarn in matching color is always useful to hem a sweater, sew down a neck or seam with less bulk. Color combos of thinner yarns create beautiful segues and ombrés.

Both these tricks require thinner yarns, and that's today's post: harvesting thinner strands of yarn by UN-spinning. It isn't hard, but a few tricks with weight and gravity help tame kinking and tangling, those enemies of splitting.

Yarn is spun by twisting together strands of fiber. A single strand of twisted yarn is a "ply." Many popular yarns are called "two-ply" or "four-ply" because they are made of two- or four plies twisted together. All this twisting--first each ply separately, then all the plies together--stores a great deal of energy in the yarn, energy we have to get rid of for the unplied yarn to lay smooth.

Geek Note:  This linked photo shows some plied yarns are made of other plied yarns. Further, number of plies does not correlate to the overall thickness of the yarn, because any one ply can be thick or thin.)  

Some silky yarns let you simply pull plies out, but sticky wools need help. This post shows splitting a sticky 4-ply wool into two thinner 2-ply lengths.This same process can be used to split out single plies, as well. Weights are used to subtract twist, an exactly opposite process to spinning, where a weighted drop spindle adds twist. 

Materials: 

--A length of yarn. If this length is your height or less, work directly with the two ends. If this length is longer than you are tall, maybe make the yarn up into a mini-hank, as shown in this post. There is also a video of how to do this. This kind of mini-hank easily center-pulls, but does not unwrap from the tail end. Alternatively, simply snap a rubber band around a small butterfly of yarn. 

--If the length you want is longer than you are tall, a staircase is handy.

--Three crochet hooks, these are the weights. Alternative weights include binder clips or any tall, narrow, not-too heavy kitchen utensils, wooden spoons, perhaps, or chopsticks.

Weights

You could attach the weights to the yarn using regular knots, but easiest is with a slip knot, so here's a quick refresher. 

A slip knot is just a loop through a granny-knot. For splitting yarn, you want the loop to be self-tightening towards the length, not towards the  end. In other words, the  loop of the running yarn  slips towards the long part of the stand. If done right, as the weight comes onto the crochet hook (or wooden spoon or whatever) the loop tightens up to hold the weight securely. 

A slip knot's advantage is how it pulls out of the split yarn at the end, leaving no trace. A regular knot works too, but then you have to unpick the knot or cut it off. 

Set up

Start by splitting out several inches of yarn as shown below. If splitting a short length, it doesn't matter which end you split. If using a mini-hank, split out the center-pull end.

The yarn here is being unspun by twisting it clockwise. But, some yarns require to be spun counter-clockwise to be untwisted. Within seconds of starting, it'll be obvious which way to go. 

Now there are three ends: the tail end of the yarn to be unspun, as well as the two splits. Using slip knots (or regular knots) attach a crochet hook to each 2-ply split. To the other end of the yarn length, slip-knot the third hook. Again, the direction of the slip is away from the tail, so as weight comes on, the knots tighten. 

A longer length of yarn is being split here, so the excess is stored out of the way in a mini-hank to prevent tangling, with additional lengths pulled out as needed. 

If only splitting a shorter amount, the set up is the same but there's no need to make up a mini-hank, because there is no excess yarn to keep out of the way. Simply attach the three weights to the opposite ends of an un-hanked length of yarn.

Now, at the top of a staircase, toss the whole assembly over the edge, keeping hold of the 2-ply splits. With a split hanging from each hand, and the unspilt yarn hanging in the middle, keep untwisting by simply pulling the halves apart gently. If wooly bits catch between the splits, break them loose gently with a forefinger. Hold the yarns far enough apart so they don't tangle. For longer lengths, you can see that a mini-hank is useful: it stays compact and together, but easily center-pulls additional lengths as needed. If using a yarn butterfly rubber-banded together, also pull out lengths as needed, out from under the rubber band. At the end, haul the separated strands to the top of the stairs, remove the hooks and all the slip knots come out easily. 

If you look carefully at the video, you see the two splits each twist in an opposite direction from the main ball. All that twisted-in energy is coming out, right before your eyes, with no tangling or kinking.

Use

As running yarn. For use as a running yarn, you'll end up with two lengths of thin yarn, each as long as the original: a four-foot length yields two splits of four foot each. Felting or otherwise joining these together yields a double-length strand--an eight foot strand. Therefore, untwist a length only half as long as needed, then join the two halves together for one full-length strand. 

This thinner yarn will be more fragile, but, like other fragile yarns (e.g.: Shetland, Lopi) gains strength as it is knit or crocheted. This is because working fragile yarn in loops doubles it back up again. Therefore, splits are usually strong enough for utility use--in three-needle bind off, for example, or a slip-stitched (crocheted) seam. Just go easy with the tension, especially around the felted join. 

Segues in color knitting or ombrés. Going beyond utility, a pretty trick with splits is holding two different-color strands together for segues. Just a few rows or rounds in two-colored splits erase the line between stripes in different colors. This is especially good to erase the line between two similar colors, such as a gradient set. 

A more intense use is to create ombrés by working mixed splits close together, as with this letter "B."  

Ombré created by working rows in different color splits. Where there is only one color, two splits of that color were used.

(For more about knitting words and letters, there is a whole post.)

As sewing yarn, split yarn is obviously fragile. First, it is thinner, and second, it becomes somewhat unspun--once separated out of the main ball, the fibers are not as tightly packed together. When using thinner yarn for sewing (e.g.: mattress stitch, hemming or buttons) split out short lengths: shorter than you would for thread.  Also, push the needle through (perhaps with a thimble) rather than pulling on the needle. Shorter lengths and less pulling = less stress on the yarn.

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Edit, a few days after posting. 

Originally, I wrote that for large amounts of thinner yarn, it would be best to acquire it some other way. In the meanwhile, however, a reader sent interesting feedback on the TECHknitting Ravelry forum, about how in their projects, they routinely split out large amounts of yarn. The link is here, with follow-up here. So, if you do want to split out large amounts of yarn, check out these comments (especially applicable to yarns loosely plied together such as cotton or embroidery-floss like yarns). 

--TK

Other posts about yarn handling:

Yarn organization for color knitting

Quickly unkinking yarn with a steam iron (video)

Center-pull balls of yarn, wound up by hand (with video)

Winding a Skein into a ball of yarn (with video)

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Questions? Feedback? Contact me at 

Blue Sky  @techknitter.bsky.social or  

talk to me about this post on Ravelry TECHknitter forum