hey
I have been working on edging a sweater. The pattern called for picking up stitches on a circluar needle.
I thought I did it correctly and was knitting happily along but
when I bound off and looked at the sweater the bottom of the sweater was circluar not square and could not possible be worn…Help…what did I do wrong???
How do you make a square (ish) edge with the circular needles?
Thanks :knitting:
Were you picking up sts along just the bottom edge? If so, you should pick up the sts and then turn to the wrong (private) side of the sweater and knit back in whatever st you’re doing. You want to knit back and forth on the edge (knit flat), not connect it to knit in the round. Even though you’re knitting on circular needles you can still turn to knit back and forth.
So I should knit the bottom first and then the front neck area using 2 circular needles? I’m looking for curled edges from stockinette stitch.
This is what the pattern said:
With long circular needle and RS facing you start on botton at right seam to pick up and knit sts all around outer edge of sweater, spacing sts to keep edges smooth and flat. Knit in rounds for 7 rounds. Bind off…edges will curl.
Boy did it curl and not in a good way!
Ok, so you’re picking up from the right seam all the way around the sweater and then joining in the round. Make sure that you pick up enough sts going around. You can take a look at the Free Video, under Tips, Picking up stitches. Picking up one st for each st along the bottom should work and then 3sts for every 4 rows up the fronts. At the corners, pick up a few extra sts so that you can turn the corner without pulling the edge up (too much curling). There are corners at the bottom of the fronts and maybe also at the top of the fronts depending on the kind of neckline you have. The pattern may give some guidelines as to how many sts to pick up and where.
Can you post a link to the pattern?
The pattern comes from a book called Knitting Simple Jackets (Marilyn S. Cohen) that I picked it up at store so I can’t give you a link.
If I pick up one st for each st on bottom and 3sts for every 4sts on the neckline will they fit on a 36" circular needle? It seems like an awful lot of sts??
I guess what your telling me is to make sure that I pick up enough sts around the bottom so that there is “give” so the edges don’t bow…
I need to pick up more sts around the corners and that would make it more square (ish)
Yes that’s about it (pick up 3sts for every 4 [I]rows[/I] of the fronts). I don’t know the size of the sweater but if you get too crowded, you may need to go to a longer needle.