Monday, August 13, 2007

Steeking

As you may know from reviewing the pattern, steeking is one of the techniques we'll be doing. I have only done it in a weekend workshop, but it was no big deal. Seriously! You have to remember you won't be cutting into your actual knitting, but some additional stitches (the "steek") that you've cast on at the edges and reinforced using either a sewing machine or hand sewing/crocheting.

There is a great article by Eunny Jang in the Winter 2006 Interweave Knits that walks through the various steeking methods, and I highly recommend checking it out! One thing I read in that article was that the steeks for superwash wool (like the recommended yarn) or other non-feltable fibers should be machine sewn for additional security. I don't remember if our pattern says this specifically, but I thought I'd point that out. I do think that if you don't have a sewing machine, a hand sewn or crocheted steek should be fine, provided you go over it a couple of times.

1 comment:

Knittymuggins said...

Thanks for the tips Robin! I don't know if I trust my craptastic sewing machine for this kind of thing, so I guess it will be handsewing for me!