Mattress seam help!

#1

Well I decided to finally learn how to do the mattress seam… I’d been avoiding it by using three needle bind off, kitchener, and gasp overcast seams. Well since the yarn for Alex’s pullover is varigated, my overcast seam is REALLY obvious on his sleeves. I downloaded the video for it, but I’m still lost. The sleeve isn’t stockinette, it’s a type of garter rib {p4, k2 on WS, k across on RS}, as well as the increases were done one stitch in from the selvedge… I’m having trouble with getting it to look right. When I pull the yarn taut, I swear I can see the line of the yarn going up the seam. What in the world am I doing wrong?

#2

This article from Knitty has some good photos and description of mattress stitch.
http://knitty.com/ISSUEspring04/mattress.html

Here’s a couple more if you need more visuals. It usually helps me to have several different views of the same thing.

http://www.yarn-store.com/technique-seaming-row-to-row.html
http://www.learn2knit.co.uk/knitting/joining.php

#3

*bump

#4

Thanks for the links Jan, and thanks for the bump ekg.

Unfortunately, all the links I could find showed seaming of “parallel” pieces… nothing with a curve like the sleeve I was doing. It didn’t help that this wasn’t plain stockinette either. At least I converted the pattern to being worked in the round so that I only had sleeve seams to do!!! I sort of mucked along yesterday, and got a bit of webcam coaching from my best friend. The seams are far from perfect, but they look a helluva lot better than the overcasting I had started doing. I still need to set in the other sleeve. Just those few seams I did do took the majority of the afternoon yesterday, and sleep/rest before work was much more important than fighting with Alex’s pullover for another hour or more! Right now I’m very tempted to make the sleeves on Lissa’s pullover {same pattern} backwards by picking up the stitches from the shoulder and working in the round to the wrist! I’ll take dpns over mattress stitch anyday!!! :roflhard: