How to sew on a button without the spacer sandwich

A spacer sandwich?  What?

one kind of spacer sandwich

Actually, this post is not about UFO's on a bun, it's about a different kind of spacer sandwich--it's about a little trick to make sewing on buttons easier.  How it came about is that recently, I had to sew 9 buttons onto a sweater-coat.  Naturally, only on the very last one did today's neat trick decide to reveal itself.

The problem arises because non-shanked buttons (the kinds with holes in the top) still need to have a shank (shank = little stem on button back).  The shank raises the button high enough so that you can work the button into and out of the button hole without the button compressing the fabric.  Naturally, the thicker the fabric, the longer must be the shank.  

shanked and unshanked

Shanked buttons are offered in different shank heights, but unshanked buttons are more generally versatile--making the shank yourself out of thread allows you to custom-control the shank height, and so use the same button on a thin fabric or on a thick one.

The usual method for making a thread shank on an unshanked button involves inserting a spacer of the desired height (a matchstick or toothpick is common) between the button and the fabric, then sewing the button on over the spacer.  At the end, the spacer is removed. The needle is then poked into the space between the button and the fabric, and the loose sewing loops are wrapped tightly with thread to make the shank.  Finally, the end of the thread is "buried" in the thickness of the underlying fabric, taking one or two 180 degree bends on the way to stop it from pulling out.  The end result of all the sandwiching and sewing and wrapping and burying is a thread shank.

a thread shank being wrapped

Until today's trick revealed itself to me, I dutifully sewed on buttons by making each into a button-spacer-sandwich: the button on top, the matchstick in the middle, and the knitting on the bottom.  Naturally, until several stitches were made and this slippery sandwich snugged down, the spacer wanted to shoot out, fall down or generally wiggle around, taking the button with it and requiring the whole works to be carefully repositioned before sewing could re-commence.  Annoying.

a spacer sandwich about to be sewn

So, on button number nine, when patience was wearing out and sailor words were about to fly, it occurred to me to tack the spacer down FIRST! with a couple of stitches! and THEN sew the button on over the spacer.

tack the spacer down first with a stitch or two, 
and say goodbye to the wiggly sandwich

Good knitting, TK

_____________

Related posts

Buttonhole series:
.Buttonholes in hand knitting, part 1: lore and tradition plus some nifty tricks 

.Buttonholes in hand knitting, part 2: Button lore 

.Buttonholes in Hand knitting, part 3: Sheepseye aka yarn-over buttonholes.

.Buttonholes in hand kniting, part 4: Vertical buttonholes

.Buttonholes in Hand knitting, part 5: Horizontal and Tulips buttonhole, with diagrams

.Buttonholes in Hand knitting, part 6: "Oops! I forgot a buttonhole!" 

Other button and buttonhole posts:

.Buttonhole alternatives

.How to sew on a button without the spacer sandwich

.Tulips buttonhole: the video (and an interview on Knitting Daily)

Subscribing to TECHknitting blog

Folks have been writing, asking how to subscribe to TECHknitting blog. Here is a method via Google Reader.

 After you sign into Google you can "subscribe" on Reader by clicking on the "Add a subscription" button in the upper left hand corner, then typing in the name "TECHknitting."  This will take you to the actual subscription page, where you can click on the little button that says "+ subscribe." Then, every time there is a new post, Reader will keep track of that for you.

Another advantage is that if you go to TECHknitting blog on Reader, you can read every post by simply scrolling down and down and down--the further down you scroll, the more of the blog which loads onto the reader, right back to the very first entry. (It's kind of scary to me to see how the illustrations get more primitive the further back you go.) On the other hand, if you want to read TECHknitting in the original formating (comments and all) just click on the post title to be taken there.

One of these days, Google will oblige this old blog template to be updated, and then there will be little buttons to make all this push-button easy.  Until then, however, subscriptions have to be started the old-school manual way.

--TK

My sweater slips off my shoulders...

TECHknitting blog is not about knitting rules, in fact quite the opposite--it's about knitter's choice. Yet if someone INSISTED that I HAD to state a rule, that rule would be to put a good sturdy seam across the shoulder tops and bind off the back of the neck of your knitted garment.

The rule

You see, the shoulder tops and neck back are the foundation of every sweater.  Stated otherwise, unless you live on a space station without gravity, the point of greatest contact between you and your sweater is the shoulder seams and back of the neck, because the whole garment hangs from there. If the very top of the garment is  yielding--if the neck back stretches out sideways and the shoulder seams are soft--then that garment will slip and slide from your shoulders and will never sit right.

Exceptions to the rule

Although I say a good sturdy seam is a rule, like all rules, there are exceptions and partial exceptions.

• Tight garments with negative ease cling to the body and so need not have a sturdy shoulder--in fact the ultimate negative ease garment--the tube top--has no shoulders at all. In a very tight negative-ease sweater, there is very little weight hanging from the shoulder because it clings, rather than drapes. 
• Sleeveless garments and backless garments are held up with shoulder straps or perhaps even a tie and have no shoulders.  These, too, are often quite tight garments, and their cling, coupled with the scanty amount of fabric means that there is no particular weight to drag the garment down. 
• Raglan sleeve garments, strictly speaking, do not have a shoulder seam either--they instead rely on 4 yoke seams radiating from neck to underarm to take the weight so no shoulder seam is needed.  However, even these should have their neck backs bound off. 
• Yoke-style sweaters don't have seams, either.  Instead, their construction has radiating columns of knitting extending out from the neck hole like a sunburst, and this arrangement helps distribute the weight to hang from the neck facing. These too require no shoulder seams, but their neck backs  should be bound off, especially since the neck seam is the target for all the weight of this style garment.

Yet, although there are four exceptions to the "shoulder seam" rule (and probably more I'm overlooking)  these are the kinds of exceptions which "prove the rule," as the saying goes.  In other words, these exceptions show that the shoulder seam rule doesn't apply only when some OTHER measure is taken as a substitute.  So, there must either be a way of getting around the seam, such as the four exceptions above, or there must be a good sturdy seam.

How the problem arises

Turning back to the slipping and sliding problem--how does it arise?

The back of the neck is too loose

Possibly the most common way to end up with a slipping sliding sweater to modify the directions for the back of the neck so that a collar or hood grows right out of the neck-back stitches, without any seam at all.  In other words, what generally happens is that the pattern does call for the shoulders and neck back to be bound off, and then the collar or hood stitches to be picked up THROUGH the bound off stitches.  Many knitters, faced with a pattern like that, come up with what seems a clever short cut to avoid binding off, then picking up the exact same stitches.

"I will simply avoid that seam," thinks the knitter "and simply keep knitting the collar or hood to grow right out of the neck-back stitches," and so goes their way rejoicing at the labor saved.  The rejoicing stops, however, when the garment is put on and the neck back stretches and stretches, rather than remaining seated as it ought. Of course, sometimes the pattern itself is at fault for not specifying a bind off and pick up along the neck back, but you are now too clever to follow such instructions.

Melissa has written in the comments, asking about garments worked from the top down. Starting these with a permanent cast on is something of a gamble, tension-wise.  IMHO, the best way to start these garments is with a provisional waste yarn cast on (called COWYAK--cast on with waste yarn and knit).  At the end, cast the garment OFF at the top edge.  This allows you to adjust the tension (more than once, if needed) for the neck opening, before going on with the neck band, collar or hood.

The neck hole is too big

A boat collar (also called a slit-neck) is an example of a garment with a very large neck opening.  These are lovely to show off the shoulder tops and collar bones of an Audrey Hepburn, but they can be the very devil to keep on straight, without having the garment slide off one shoulder or another.  V-neck and scoop neck styles can suffer this also, especially when too many stitches are picked up around the neck opening, or when the neckband is not knit for enough rows (knit too shallow).

The seam joining the shoulder tops is too soft

Another common cause of slipping and sliding is when the knitter modifies the shoulder seams by succumbing to the temptation for pretty, and kitchener stitches (grafts) the shoulders tops together, rather than putting in a good sturdy seam.  Kitchener stitch sure SEEMS like sewing--in fact, it is often done with a sewing needle.  However, Kitchener stitching is actually KNITTING--the needle follows the path that a knitted row would take, and that is why it is so utterly invisible.  Knitting is stretchy, and having knit fabric on the shoulder without a raglan seam or a yoke construction to take the weight results in a slipping slider that's hard to wear. Again, some patterns actually call for a grafted shoulder, but you are free to ignore such instructions and seam, instead.

The garment construction is inherently slippy-slidy

 Now we come to a large category of knitting a slipping slider: when the construction of the garment is responsible for the problem.  This category breaks down into (at least!!) five further subheads.

Large sweater-coats
When an entire sweater-coat is knit from heavy yarn, there is a real problem of keeping it seated at the neck and shoulders, regardless of any construction detail.  The fact is, knitting stretches, even properly bound off and seamed knitting.  In this case, we knitters must borrow from tailors, and use their techniques--there is a description of reinforcement with a ribbon, below.

Drop shoulder sweaters
Drop shoulder sweaters do HAVE shoulder seams, but no real shoulders.  Stated otherwise, The "shoulder seams" are so long that they hang well off the shoulder. This, coupled with the bulk and weight of the sleeves themselves, drags the garment away from the wearer's neck on both sides.  This is especially a problem when the garment is a cardigan, knit in heavy wool.  Worn open, drop-shoulder cardigans tend to slide away.  If combined with a soft neck back (collar knit right out of the neck back stitches, for example) the result can be nearly unwearable.

Circle-knit garments
This innovative garment construction technique is sort of like wearing a round tablecloth with arms inserted.  The upside is a beautiful radiating pattern, often with a lovely circle motif centered on the wearer's back and lovely falls and folds of fabric cascading down the fronts.  The downside is often no shoulder seam at all--the top edge of the tablecloth is flipped back for a collar, and the shoulder line is formed at the fold.  This fold may prove to be very soft and yielding.  Some patterns get around this by having the circle truncated at the shoulder line, and then a collar added afterwards, some have other work-arounds, but many of these circle-knit garments offer a pretty fair dose of the slipping-problem.

Cuff-to-cuff garments
Cuff-to-cuff garments are fun to knit and offer a truly organic method of getting vertical stripes in a hand knit garment without having to knit intarsia bobbin-work, or fair-isle color work. Yet, when a garment is knit cuff-to-cuff, there is nearly never a shoulder seam because the whole point of the garment is to knit it sideways, each row extending over the shoulder from one bottom edge to the other, then back again.  The neck-back must be bound off--it is the fabric selvedge, shown in red below--so these garments aren't quite as loose as circle knit garments, yet nonetheless, cuff-to-cuff sweaters can offer a pretty high dose of slipping and sliding.

Dolman (aka "batwing") sleeves
Sometimes patterns are offered for garment with dolman sleeves, knit bottom-to-top, then grafted shut along the long sleeve-top seam and right along the shoulder too.  Like the cuff-to-cuff, such a design usually offers at least some firmness along the shoulder line by having the back of the neck bound off, but can also suffer from sliding.

Some solutions

The simplest, most time-tested solution is either to create a sturdy seam at the shoulder PLUS bind off the neck back OR to knit a garment from the "exception" list such as yoked or raglan.  Yet, this is no help if you've already knit a slipping slider, or if you simply adore a garment construction which inherently slips and slides.

Slip stitch

This is probably the easiest fix for an already-made sweater which wants to slip and slide off the shoulders. Run a line of non-stretching yarn across the top of the shoulders and the back of the neck.  This is usually done with a crochet hook, applying the yarn in a slip stitch.

Here is a TECHknitting post about crocheting for knitters, which includes information about how to work the slip stitch. TECHknitting blog has also covered slip stitching in the context of firming the stretchy edge of a garter stitch scarf, and the idea is identical here.  Rather than traveling along the edge of the fabric, however, the slip stitch is worked across the back of the neck and the top of the shoulders. Below is an illustration showing a line of slip stitch worked across the interior of a knit fabric. There is nothing to stop you from running two or even more parallel lines of slip stitch if the garment requires--a large shawl collar rising directly out of a neck back, for example, or a circle knit garment with no other provision in the pattern for a shoulder seam.

Slip stitch to tighten a loose neck back
or a too-soft shoulder seam

PS: the slip stitch trick works pretty well to tighten other loose parts too: sweater and mitten cuffs, loose and floppy bottom bands, hats too large and so on. 

Ribbon or fabric tape sewn into the shoulder seam

Another traditional method, although now not much used, is to sew in a line of grosgrain ribbon or twill fabric tape along the shoulder seam.  In a modern variation, the shoulder seam on garments made of commercially knit fabric is serged together with a narrow strip of fabric tape (sheer or twill)  serged in along the seam also for a three-layer fabric sandwich.

The ribbon/tape prevents stretching, helps distribute the stress and generally preserves the garment--we have quite old sweaters in our family which incorporate a ribbon and these have held up well over the years.

Sewing grosgrain ribbon over a seam
from the inside of the garment

The stitch to use for sewing the ribbon or the tape along the shoulder top is the overcast stitch, worked in little tiny stitches all along both long edges of the ribbon, pushing the sewing needle through the plies (split the plies) of the yarn so that the stitches do not show on the outside. This is the method I would use to correct the droop and stretch of a garment previously grafted (rather than seamed) shut at the shoulder.  This is also a good trick for a drop shoulder garment.

A garment with a ribbon sewn along the shoulder seam is rock solid and will not slip. A large sweater-coat might even warrant the ribbon being sewn along the neck back too--and it might be wise to use a rather wide ribbon for this--perhaps as wide as 1 1/2 inches, or even more.  A neck-back ribbon is located so it runs over the neck-bone (the large bone at the top of your spine / base of your neck)

Making a too-large neck hole smaller by re-knitting the neck band

If too many stitches were picked up around the neck opening, OR if the neck band was knit too high (too many rows/rounds) without sufficient decreases, the result is the same:  A ruffling and loose neck band.  This is tedious to fix, but hardly difficult:  pull out (frog) the band and do it again, on fewer stitches or with more decreases.  

Another recipe for a too-large neck opening is when the neck band was knit too shallow (too few rows/rounds).  The cure is easy:  Take out the bind-off, and add a few more rows or rounds, remembering to add decreases when appropriate.  This cure will surely work, regardless of the original size of the neck opening--you can work the neck band as high as needed: at the extreme, you can build the neck up into a mock turtleneck or even a full turtle neck--maybe not what you set out to make, but these neck styles are certainly not going let the garment slide around.  

Correcting a sliding boat collar (slit neck)

For a slit neck which will not stay put, consider sewing in two little ribbons, one on each side of the neck.  Alternatively, knit two short little straps and sew one in to the inside on either side of the neck. Where these ribbons or knit straps peek out at the shoulder, they will look like camisole straps.  Either of these cures will surely cure "slide-itis" in your boat necks.

A final point: seaming

We'll end with a final point: just how DO you make sturdy non-stretching shoulder seams?  IMHO, the three best ways are--

• Slip stitch: first bind off each shoulder using the ordinary chain bind off, then slip stitch the shoulder seams shut from the inside (this is the same slip stitch as the "neat little edging," or the slip stitch illustrated above, only worked through both layers of fabric at the shoulder top).  This information is also shown (illustrated through both layeres) in this post about crocheting for knitters. 
• Back stitch: first bind off each shoulder using the ordinary chain bind off, then simply sew the shoulder seam shut from the inside using the back stitch and working through both layers of fabric at the shoulder top.  Use a dull-pointed needle and work between the stitches, not through the plies. 
• Use the three-needle bind off: for this trick, hold the live stitches for each shoulder together on their two needles, the front fabric face of each piece touching, then use a third needle to bind off through two stitches (one from the front needle, one from the back needle) at the same time.  For further information, go to the illustrated post about three needle bind off. 

Good knitting--TK
* * *
This is fifth in a series on garment correction.  The others in this series are:

Part 1: My sweater is too wide

Part 2: My sweater is too long, my sweater is too short

Part 3:My sweater is too tight under the arms/at the bust/chest--the magic of gussets

Part 4: My hat is too loose

How I cured garter stitch border flip: another method for encouraging garter stitch borders to lay flat

7 illustrations, click any illustration to enlarge

Now the bands don't flip,
so jacket can be worn open

 Recently, I completed a lacy little jacket with garter stitch front bands. The pattern called for garter stitch bands knit "as you go."

Experience indicated that this design would end up with the bands flipping backwards as if on a lengthwise hinge, a situation I privately think of as a "flip hinge." Specifically, a "flip hinge" is always going to be created along the column where a garter band (border) meets a stockinette-type fabric.  Along this column, the garter stitch borders will fold back and flip so far under the stockinette fabric as to be invisible.  (This is not just true of front bands, as on this little jacket, but also true where ever a garter stitch border is called for--whether a sweater, scarf, shawl or afghan block.) 

In past posts, TECHknitting blog has offered two cures for this problem: zig-zag bands and facings. Both of these solutions really do cure flip. Yet, neither of these cures quite suited the style of the little lacy sweater.  There was significant shaping alongside the front bands, so the zig-zag method would not have worked, and a facing would have been too bulky for the style of the garment.  What to do?

Combining a couple of TECH-tricks resulted in a pretty good 2-part cure.  It's not perfect:  serious blocking was also required, and even now a very slight tendency to flip remains.  Yet the situation has been so substantially improved that the jacket can be worn open, as shown in the photo above. 

Intro

The first part of the cure involved advance planning.  As the garment was knit, the garter stitch border was lengthened to match the abutting stockinette fabric. The second part involved the finishing process--adding a column of stitches with a crochet hook all along the flip-hinge column, thus strengthening and neutralizing the fabric along this line. The blocking followed.

Why lengthen the garter stitch border? 

Do you wonder why lengthening a garter stitch band would combat flip?  Garter stitch is actually shorter, row for row, than stockinette.  In stockinette, the stitches lay smooth and long but in garter stitch the stitches are diverted into the thickness of the fabric. In other words, any one knitted stitch can either be thick or it can be long.  Because the stitches in a garter stitch fabric are busy being thicker, they end up shorter.

When a short fabric is knit row-for-row alongside a longer one, the shorter one (the garter stitch border)  pulls the longer one (the adjoining stockinette fabric) into a sort of a crescent.  This stress is one (but not the only!) cause of band flipping. By lengthening the garter stitch band of the little lacy jacket, this particular stress was removed, so there was less tension to cause flipping in the first place.

How to lengthen the garter stitch band: short rows

(Note that in all the below illustrations, the BLUE stitches are in the garter stitch band, while the RED stitches are in the abutting stockinette fabric.)

To lengthen, short rows were inserted on the jacket's garter stitch band after every 10th row, per the schematic below.  (This ratio has worked pretty well for me over the years.  Yet I have never actually taken the time to measure the length difference between stockinette and garter stitch fabrics.  Your experience may very well lead you to choose a different frequency at which to insert short rows into a garter band.)

Added short rows illustrated in white

For further information about short rows, here are two posts:  the first post covers the theory of short rows while the second post covers several different ways to make short rows.  The kind used on this project are called "wrap and lift," the third kind covered in the how-to post (scroll).The "wraps" were formed around the first stitch of the stockinette of the jacket front, NOT the last stitch of the garter fabric of the band.  In other words, the the band was always knitted full width.  

Sometimes, especially in a loosely knit work, merely lengthening the garter stitch band is so successful, that nothing more remains to be done to prevent flipping other than a serious blocking.  However, I was pretty sure that with this cotton jacket, more was required, so it was on to the second step--the stabilizing column of stitches. 

How to add the stabilizing column of stitches 

along the "mini tube" of the flip hinge

This step was done with a crochet hook and a length of running yarn.  It is essentially a trick of crocheting a column of slip stitches onto the column where the flipping wants to take place.

Specifically, the last column of the garter stitch front band where it meets the stockinette fabric of the garment is the column acting as the flip hinge.  If you poke at this column, you will discover this hinge column is actually a mini-tube.

This mini-tube in the fabric arises because the garter stitch is thick, but the stockinette is not.  Where a thick fabric meets a thinner one, the ladder from each row of yarn must be "drawn in" from the thicker to the thinner.  Because these ladders are being drawn in from the two opposite faces of the garter stitch fabric, one after another, they form this mini-tube.

The ladders of the mini-tube are illustrated in green below.

If you have a sample handy, you might like to poke a crochet hook into this tube and see for yourself.  Your set-up should look like the illustration below.

Mini-tube with crochet hook inserted

Once the crochet hook has been inserted into the ladders of mini-tube, the running yarn is drawn through the tube in a series of crocheted chain stitches, working down the tube, ladder by ladder.  If this makes no sense to you, no worries: step-by-step illustrated instructions follow.

The work is turned so that the INSIDE of the band is facing you, which means that the stockinette fabric facing you will be the PURLED face--the REVERSE stockinette on the inside of the garment.  As a result of turning, the blue garter fabric formerly illustrated on the right is now on the left. 

The crochet hook catches a loop in the running yarn, illustrated in gold in the picture below.

This loop is drawn downward THROUGH mini-tube, below the ladder in green marked "1."  Next, the crochet hook is pushed UP in the air on the OUTSIDE of the mini tube, so that it now passes in FRONT of ladder 1, with the golden loop remaining parked around its barrel.  In other words, the loop is parked around the hook barrel and therefore is forced to remain stuck in position below ladder 1, as shown, while the hook itself is free to rise up on the outside of the mini-tube, above ladder 1. Finally, the crochet hook again catches the running yarn.

The crochet hook is next pulled downward, taking the running yarn with it in a new loop.  The hook with its running yarn will pass in FRONT of ladder 1, and will pass through the first golden loop made, and will then be pulled BELOW the ladder marked "2."  

This second loop is again left parked around the barrel of the crochet hook just as the first loop was, while the hook is again pushed UP in the air on the OUTSIDE of the mini tube, so that it now passes in front of ladder 2. Again, the crochet hook catches the running yarn, as illustrated.

These steps are then repeated.  So, for example, for the next step, the crochet hook will form a new loop out of the running yarn--the third loop--and will again pull this loop down,  passing in front of ladder 2, through the second golden loop, and down below ladder 3, where it will again be left parked around the hook barrel, while the crochet hook again goes up the outside of the mini tube in search of the running yarn for loop 4.  

This action will be repeated over and over, each new loop drawn in FRONT of the preceding ladder and THROUGH the preceding loop--the new loop of running yarn therefore going through TWO loops each time--the old gold loop left parked around the hook-barrel and the next green ladder below.

At the end of this process, you will have two ends to work in, one at the top, and one at the bottom of each band.  However, these are easy to skim into the chain stitches you've made in the mini-tube. 

The added stitches
form a chain

All this crocheting eventually forms a continuous chain of stitches which runs lengthwise through the core and along the back face of the mini-tube.  In the photo to the left, the stitches of this chain has been picked out in gold highlighting, so that you can see what it looks like in the real world. 

By using your crochet hook to stuff these chain stitches behind and into the core of the mini-tube column, the flip hinge action of that column is pretty much disabled.  In other words, the golden stitches help prevent the flip action of the mini-tube column and therefore help prevent the bordering garter stitches from flipping back.

As mentioned above, this trick really isn't complete until you severely BLOCK the garment--without blocking, the golden stitches simply won't be sufficient to stop the flip.  However, with these stitches added, and with the blocking, the garter borders will lay, well... perhaps not perfectly flat, but a LOT flatter with a LOT LESS flipping than without the operation--flat enough to wear the garment open, at any rate, as shown by the opening photo.

One final note:  where the short rows are, the rhythm of the fabric is disturbed.  However, the mini-tube does continue through the disturbance.  This is because, as stated above, the band is to be knit full-width, with the wrap going around the first stockinette stitch, not around the last garter stitch.  If you poke around with your crochet hook, you will find where the tube continues, even through the disturbance.

Good knitting!  --TK

PS: (For a more in-depth view of the little lacy jacket, you can go to the Ravelry project page for the garment.) 

I-cord with added curl (and maybe beads, also)

Gardening  (as it does every summer) has taken the front seat here at chezTECH.  As a consequence, knitting has no power over me just now, and the blog is on vacation.

However...someone asked a question on Ravelry recently which caught my eye--a question about making curly I-cord.  As it happens, one method for making this recently revealed itself to me.  So, taking time from the garden here's a little mid-summer post on one way of making I-cord curly (for glasses-cords, necklaces, edging and the like).

Curly I-cord "in the wool"
(lace weight mohair, cord made on an 
embellish knit mill, size 6 beads)

Step 1: Make a length of LOOSELY knit I-cord. If you are knitting the cord by hand, use needles larger than normal for that weight yarn.  If making the cord on a mill, where the needle size cannot be changed, use thinner yarn than normal to get the loose cord required for this trick. Also, The I-cord must be at least 4 stitches, a three stitch one won't work very well.

Step 2: To make the cord curly, the basic trick is very similar to the crochet hook method for tightening a ladder in of loose stitches in decreases or a column of loose stitches knit stitches in ribbing.  Specifically: pick a "ladder" between two columns of stitches as the one to operate on.  If you should happen to have a ladder caused by the "gap around the back"" (such as sometimes happens when making I-cord by hand) choose that ladder.  In the below illustration, a four-stitch I-cord is being curled up, the ladder being operated upon is shown in pink.

Step 3: Inserting a crochet hook into the pink ladder between two stitches, draw the next rung of the ladder through the first.  Continue in this manner until you reach the top. In the below illustration, the original four-stitch I-cord is in the process of getting a fifth column added: its two pink stitches have already latched up out of the pink ladder. 

Ladder (pink) being latched up

As you latch up the ladder, the I-cord will curl up because the new pink column you're hooked up is MUCH MUCH tighter and therefore MUCH MUCH shorter than the other four columns. Being shortest, it forces the other, longer columns to spiral around it, and voila: curly I-cord.  Of course, the entire cord gets shorter, so make the original (uncurled) cord longer than you need, to account for this.

A tip for curlier cords:  Just as curly hair will be curlier when twirled around a finger so a curly I-cord will be curlier when twirled up, too.  If you are making a closed shape (necklace) twirl up the cord over your finger before joining the two ends to permanently set the curl. If you are making an open shape, such as a tiny scarf, then twirl up the cord every now and then as you wear it, to remind it of its duty.  If you wish to use this for an edging, twirl up the cord, as tight as you like, then tack down the cord to the edge, touching down at least once in every curl. (If you leave the cord un-twirled, it can be more wavy than curly--which is also a nice look for an edging.)

Another tip:  If you like, you can bead the cord by using a very small crochet hook, small enough to fit a bead upon.  As illustrated below, insert the bead over the hook, then draw up the next stitch in the ladder.  Once that stitch is drawn up as shown, you can slide the bead off the crochet hook onto the stitch.  The following stitch would be drawn up the usual way.  The below illustration shows one bead slipped onto every third stitch (ie: every third row).

Beads being added every third row

Good knitting!

--TK
You have been reading "I cord with a curl" on TECHknitting blog.

My hat is too loose...

"My hat is too big!  How can I tighten it?" is a question frequently asked on community knitting boards.  Luckily, there are two good options, but today's post starts with two options which do NOT work, yet which are frequently suggested.

1)  Blocking the hat smaller  The idea behind this advice is that if you wet the hat and then block it smaller, the hat will stay that way.  It is true that thoroughly wetting a too-loose hat, then firmly yanking it lengthwise will make it both longer and narrower.  It is also true that pushing the fabric together and drying it in that scrunched-up position will make the hat look smaller. Yet, sadly, although blocking can do many magical things (such as make your knitting look more professional by evening out the stitches, or opening up lace) it cannot make things smaller.  Logic will tell you that any "smallerizing" you were able to achieve by blocking will be undone as soon as you put the hat on and wear it.    Plus, blocking really works best on wool, anyway, so if your hat is made of anything else, fuggedaboudit, as they say in New York.

2) Felting the hat smaller The idea here is to shrink the hat by felting it smaller.  It is indisputably true that felting will shrink woolens. However, imho, this advice is ill-advised.  Felting is a wild and uncontrolled process which goes very very fast when it finally happens, so getting the hat to shrink "just so" would be a matter of great luck.  A too-small, too-short, too-stiff object--a sort of a felt bowl--is just as likely to be the result of the experiment.  It is true that there are commercially felted hats, and even commercially-made felted jackets, but fitted felted garments are cut out of sheets of felted knitting and then sewn together. Home-made felted clogs are a popular exception, as are felted mittens, but clogs and mittens are meant to fit loosely--it is not necessary to have them sit "just so" around one's feet or hands, as a hat must sit around one's brow.

The one almost-exception to all this occurs with superwash wool. Of course, the whole POINT of superwash wool is that it does NOT felt, yet many knitters may not realize that putting this sort of yarn into a dryer helps it regain its bounce and size--a superwash hat laid out to dry will be much bigger than one machine-dried.  So, while throwing a superwash hat into the dryer is not felting per se, it is "shrinking" through using a clothes drier--an almost exception to the don't-felt concept.

Now we come to two ideas which DO work.

1. Lining the hat  This idea is 100% guaranteed to work 100% of the time.  The idea is to make a  lining--either a full lining or a headband style lining, which does fit your head exactly as you would like.  An excellent fabric to use for this lining is polar fleece. Polar fleece is stretchy, non-itchy, comes in various weights, and best of all, it does not fray (and so, does not need to be hemmed). The lining is then sewn inside the too-large hat, easing the excess fabric of the hat to the lining, one little stitch at a time.  Because the lining was made to fit your head exactly, the resulting hat must also fit your head exactly.  There are more complete details about the process in these two posts:
Lining a hat, headband style
Lining a hat, fully-lined style

2. Elastic Sometimes, lining a hat will not work, either because of its style--a slouch-hat, for example, with no real "band" around the forehead, or because a sewn in band is not a good fit for the style of the hat--a lacy cap, for example.  For such hats, you may wish to consider thread elastic, worked into the edge for several rows or rounds.  The how-to can be found in this post on tightening up socks--scroll down a bit and you will find thread elastic discussed.

Good knitting!

This post the fourth in a series on garment correction.  The other posts in this series are:
Part 1: My sweater is too wide
Part 2: My sweater is too long, my sweater is too short
Part 3:My sweater is too tight under the arms/at the bust/chest--the magic of gussets
Part 5: My sweater slips off my shoulders
Part 6 (still to come): My sweater is too small around my middle



--TK
You have been reading TECHknitting blog on "my hat is too big!"

My sweater is too tight under the arms, or at the chest/bust--the magic of gussets

If the bust/chest area of a sweater is too tight, you can fix this by messing around with the armhole length.  Are you surprised? In fact, the fit of the upper body of a garment is very highly affected by the length of the armhole, and a great deal of the designer's attention is paid to the exact measurements in this complex, saddle-shaped area where many seams run together, and the arm meets the body of the sweater.

The great thing about the upper body/armhole connection is that the entire fit around the bust/chest can be eased by lengthening the armhole (and, of course, the fit around the upper arm can also be eased in this manner).  Although lengthening the armhole sounds like a project which would require re-knitting the upper part of the garment as well as reknitting the sleeves, this is luckily not the case IF (and only if) the garment was made in pieces (has seams).

To lengthen the armhole, and thus add ease to the upper body area (and to the upper arm area, as well) we are going to use a gusset.  A gusset is simply an inlaid piece of fabric specifically designed to add ease to the applied area.  Our specific gusset, an underarm gusset for a sweater, is a diamond-shaped piece of fabric knit from the same yarn as the garment itself, then inserted (sewn in) along the top of the side seam and the top of the arm seam.

This magic diamond-shaped insert adds ease where it is needed, and thus saves you having to reknit a substantial portion of the garment. Although the line drawings below shows a gusset set into a set-in sleeve garment, the gusset trick actually works with every shoulder style--drop-shoulder, raglan, etc. This is because it is not added at the shoulder itself, but under the arm at the side seam, and so creates no distortion in the shoulder style selected. (And for the historically-minded, a gusset is a traditional method of constructing ganseys.)

As to how large to make the gusset, you must first determine how total many inches of ease you want to add around the garment at the bust/chest (or around the upper arm, if this is where the tightness is).  You would then work each gusset until the total width at the widest point of EACH gusset is ONE HALF the total added ease desired, so that both gussets together add up to the total ease required around the circumference of the garment.

As to knitting the  gusset itself:
Prep step: cast on, then work two rows of 2 st I-cord.
row 1: k1, m1, k1 (3 stitches on needle)
row 2:  purl.
row 3: k1, m1, k to with 1 st of opp edge, m1, k1.
row 4, purl.
REPEAT rows 3 and 4 until the diamond is HALF as wide across as the total number of inches of ease you seek, as explained above.
row 5: k across with no shaping.
row 6: purl across with no shaping.
row 7: k1, SYTK (or any other left leaning decrease you prefer), k to within 3 sts of other edge, k2tog, k1.
row 8: purl.
REPEAT rows 7 and 8 until 5 sts remain on a purl row.
row 9: k1, work a three stitch decrease (scroll) on the middle three stitches, k1.
row 10: purl
row 11: k1, k2tog, 2 stitches on needle
finishing step: work 2 rows of 2 st I-cord, bind off

Below is a photo of a gusset knitted according to the above instructions, the widest measurement is 17 stitches.

When you come to sew the gusset inside the garment, pick out (remove) the seam in the underarm area of your sweater (top of body, top of arm) beyond what you will need to sew in the gusset--this gives you some maneuvering room. To make sure of your gusset placement, begin the sewing centered on the center two (no shaping) rows (i.e.: rows 5 and 6) as shown in the illustration two below.  Resew the body and sleeve seams above and below the gusset insertion and wear your remodeled sweater in health and good fortune.

Here are some tips:

1) As to the actual sewing-in of the gusset, the illustration shows an overcast stitch worked from the outside, but this is only to give the general idea of sewing, and to maintain the perspective common to all the illustrations, namely from the back of the right arm.  The overcast stitch worked from the outside would actually be a poor choice. Far better would be to sew (or slip stitch!) the gusset from the inside. (Aaaand--if you had slip stitched the seams, rather than mattress-stitched them, taking out the seams would have been easier in the first place!)

Click this (or any!) illustration to enlarge

2) The sewing (or slip stitching!) from the inside is done at the rate of 1/1 (one stitch of the gusset is sewn/slip stitched to one stitch of the body or arm)

3) The instructions included in this post for knitting the gusset result in a utility sort of a gusset which adds width in a relatively concentrated area--just at the underarm.  If the problem extends past this area, work the gusset relatively longer (i.e." a longer diamond) by adding more plain rows between increases/decreases.  This will add more ease in a longer stretch of both the body and the arm.  Of course, if the problem is mainly in the upper arm, you can make the gusset shorter at the body end while knitting it longer along the arm seam.  If the reverse is true--if the body is tight but the upper arm is pretty much OK in circumference, reverse the procedure--making the arm part of the gusset relatively shorter than the body portion to provide bust shaping with very little ease added to the arm circumference. In these ways, the gusset can be customized to your exact ease requirements.

4) For supergeeks: If you are a demon for symmetry, begin the gusset with a provisional cast on in the very middle of the gusset, then follow the directions for the decrease portion of the gusset. When the first half is done, remove the provisional cast on to re-gain live sts on your needle, then work the decrease portion of the gusset again.  As you can see in the photo of the gusset, above, the decrease portion at the top of the gusset looks prettier than the increase portion at the bottom of the gusset, so by working both ways from the middle, you'll get two pretty decrease portions while avoiding the increase portion altogether.

Finally we'll end with a note on gussets at the crotch, rather than under the arm. Crotch gussets are a great idea for adding ease in an often-tight area. These are traditional in eastern-style pants and leggings.  While not common in western clothing, they are available as a specialty item.  Those who knit longies (either baby-bottom leggings or children's/adult leggings) can add a gusset to the crotch area in the identical manner as shown in this post for underarms. This eases the entire garment for better fit, as well as the side benefit of moving the seams to lower-stress locations.

--TK
Part 1: My sweater is too wide
Part 2: My sweater is too long, my sweater is too short
Part 4: My hat is too loose
Part 5 : My sweater slips off my shoulders
Part 6 (still to come): My sweater is too small around my middle

My sweater is too long, my sweater is too short...

Changing the length of a garment is actually fairly easy (at least conceptually).  The technical details are in a previous TECHknitting post called "length reassignment surgery."  The purpose of this post is really only to provide an updated link for folks (and they are many) who have not been able to find the surgery link through a search-engine search: the title of THIS post is directly on point, whereas the title of the surgery post was not very findable.

--TK
This is the second in a series on garment correction. The others in this series include
Part 1: My sweater is too wide
Part 3:My sweater is too tight under the arms/at the bust/chest--the magic of gussets
Part 4: My hat is too loose
Part 5: My sweater slips off my shoulders
Part 6 (still to come): My sweater is too small around my middle

My sweater is too wide...

TECHknitting blog is starting a new series on garment correction, inspired by a question on Ravelry. The first in the series is:  "my sweater is too wide, how can I fix it?"

There are two main methods for fixing a too-wide sweater.  The most obvious (although not the most knitterly) method of fixing this is to get yourself to a serger, and simply take out a whack of sweater.  This may seem like odd advice, but when you come to realize that many commercial sweaters are in fact serged together from flat-knit sheets or tubes of knitting, it becomes less odd.  Here is a link to a sweater "saved by the serger," knit by my friend and fellow-Madisonian, the Ravelry hall-of-famer Rududu.  You can see that Rududu narrowed the sleeves on a mohair garment by simply serging them smaller.

For a more knitterly approach, consider reworking the knit fabric.  As you know, the same number of stitches in ribbing are substantially narrower than the same number in stockinette, because ribbing "draws up." TECHknitting blog has already shown how to rework stockinette into ribbing in the context of rolling stockinette scarves, and the cure is the same for a too-wide sweater.  A panel or two of ribbing in the middle of a stockinette field will narrow the entire garment.

If, on a bottom-up garment, the neckband has already been put on, it must be taken off again, and the same applies to the need to remove the bottom band on a top-down garment.  Once the band is off, pick out the cast-off until you have live stitches again, then rework the stockinette into ribbing using a crochet hook to rehook-up the dropped down columns (again, instructions are here).  You can make a single panel in the middle of a garment pattern or two panels, with a strip of plain stockinette between, or any arrangement you might like.   Work a few columns per panel into ribbing and try the garment on again.  Still too wide?  Add more columns (or panels!) of ribbing. Of course, you can try on the garment as you rework the fabric into ribbing, so you won't overshoot the mark.

And, naturally, you can tighten up too-loose sleeves by this trick also.

--TK
You have been reading TECHknitting blog on: "fixing a too-wide sweater."

This is the first in a series on garment correction.  The others in this series include
Part 2: My sweater is too long, my sweater is too short
Part 3:My sweater is too tight under the arms/at the bust/chest--the magic of gussets
Part 4: My hat is too loose
Part 5: My sweater slips off my shoulders
Part 6 (still to come): My sweater is too small around my middle

Items started along a long edge--how best to cast on

A perennial question on community knitting boards is how best to cast on along a very long edge, such as a scarf made edge-to-edge (as opposed to top-to-bottom) or a wide afghan made all in one piece.  IMHO, the best way would be to provisionally cast-on the long edge, using  COWYAK or the crochet method.  Afterwards, when the garment is finished, take out the provisional cast-on and work a bind-off to finish that edge.  This has two advantages.

1. The tension of the edge can be adjusted afterwards to suit the tension of the garment
2. The two edges will match perfectly, both tension-wise and appearance-wise, having both been bound off by the same method.

(In fact, is my humble opinion that this is also the best way to cast on for pretty much ALL garment knitting--such as a bottom-up sweater.  In other words, cast on provisionally, work the body of the garment, and only afterwards add the bottom band.  You can then freely experiment with different bands--hems, ribbings, etc.  Also by this method, The top and bottom bands will thus match along their edges, and the tension of the whole bottom band can be adjusted once you have a better idea of how the garment fits, and how the bottom band should best be tensioned to best fit the knitting of the body of the garment.  A further advantage to this method is that it also allows you to fine-tune the length of the finished garment, as well as of the cuffs for bottom-up work; or the tension and height of the neck band on a top-down garment.) 


--TK