I’m not knitting a cardigan at the moment, but what I struggle with is button bands. Patterns only ever tell me to knit until the band is slightly stretched until it fits. I’d like to avoid the jog at the bottom and I can’t manage to do them straight and avoid a curve. They are usually in rib and I’d like the rib to be the right way up so I feel unsure about picking up stitches and knitting but if this is the only way to avoid the curve, I’d do it. Could somebody please advise.
Thank you.
Hello
I’m sure everyone must have their own favourite videos for this, here is one I found really useful to make the bottom and top jog free, there are links to other videos which are related such as picking up stitches, how to make sure your band doesn’t flip (tension on the rib and bind off) which might not be included here.
This is useful for ribbed side vents and other places too.
I’m afraid you can end up with a curve (band shorter than it should be in comparison to the cardigan fronts) whether you knit the band vertically and sew it on, or pick up and knit “outwards”.
A swatch should help with either method, although it’s not foolproof.
If you knit your band separately/vertically, you can often undo the stitching and reattach using a different ratio if you see it pulling too much after attaching a few inches. (This would need to be on the side without the buttonholes.) Also, you could baste the band on to the body to see how the length is before you start stitching it on properly.
(Baste means to sew on temporarily using a less involved stitch to check length, fit, etc. before doing the final, more time consuming sewing. So perhaps a quick whip stitch in this situation.)
The red cardigan in this tutorial is done with the buttonband knitted vertically and then sewn on.
Thank you very much for these helpful links. I’ve never had this explained to me before.
Found this video the other day and I’m going to give it a try. Looks to make a very neat join.
This is a great video. Thanks for sharing. It makes me want to work a button band right away! I really like the effect of having the pick up and irst couple of rows in the contrast yarn then change to the main colour, so effective in the colours she chose.
It’s hard to go wrong with Roxanne! Although sometimes she gives more info than I want right NOW…but at least she makes it easy to skip forward to the part you really need.
I’ve been giving this some thought and wondered if it would be possible to knit the button band at the same time as the cardigan by casting on extra stitches and knitting them in rib and then follow the pattern for the side. Can this be done?
Maybe you’d like this method, the rib is vertical which I now notice was what you wanted. I don’t think I realised in your first post you’d said you wanted the rib the right way up.
As to what you asked about knitting the band at the same time. There are patterns which have the band knit at the same time, row by row with the main body of the cardigan, the thing to remember there though is you remove the option if working the rib in a smaller needle. Ribbing is often more open than stockinette so can look looser, flabby even, and the smaller needle compensates by making the stitches look more even sized with the body, or smaller than those in the body, plus a tighter gauge gives some stability to the fabric. Overall I think you may not like the looser gauge if you’re after a really neat finish.
There are other options though. I saw a cable edge button band where the buttons fit into the hole created by the cables. There’s certainly no need for a regular, traditional rib if you don’t want one.
Edited to add - oh, guess what, Patty has the solution, vertical rib on smaller needle! Of course Patty has the answer
https://www.moderndailyknitting.com/community/ask-patty-keep-it-tight/
Edited again to add this option
Thank you very much for your reply. I’d forgotten that the rib is usually done on smaller needles.