How To Read Your Knitting For Perfect Seams
Seaming is a basic part of knitting and when done well many seams can totally blend into the knitted piece lending stability and structure to the finished item while remaining almost invisible. To create seams that are perfectly blended into the surrounding knitting it is important to be able to ‘read’ your knitting and use the structure of the loops to inform the placement of your stitches.
To create a beautiful stockinette stitch seam you will need to stitch the seaming thread through the bound off stitches so the yarn travels in the same direction that it would if the stitches had been knit. This involves seeing the stitches as little ‘v’s.
Setup Step (half stitch):
Beginning with the seaming yarn threaded onto a tapestry needle bring the needle up from back to front through the middle of ‘v’ (stitch) on the furthermost right end of the bottom piece.
Step 1:
Now moving from right to left bring the needle around the back of both posts that make the ‘v’ (stitch) on the far right of the top piece.
Step 2:
Bring the needle down from front to back into the middle of the ‘v’ (stitch) that you originally brought the needle up through. Then bring the needle up from back to front through the middle of the next ‘v’ (stitch) to the left.
Step 3:
Moving from right to left bring the needle around the back of both posts that make the ‘v’ (stitch) on the next stitch to the left on the top piece.
Repeat Steps 2-3 for remaining stitches, with this method your seam will be a half a stitch off between the top and bottom so use the end of the tail to join the verticals and smooth the small gap. This essentially creates a Grafted Seam, very much like Kitchener’s stitch without having to worry about active stitches.
As you can see below the seam is almost invisible since we worked with the stitch structure to join the two pieces.
Want to practice your Pickup Skills? Try knitting a Carson Sweater, the seamed shoulders are a great place to practice this technique.
