During the last months I receive quiet a lot of emails from you with different questions – helping with deciphering the pattern instructions, technical things, stitch pattern explanations, etc. I try my best to answer as detailed as possible, but after receiving several quiet similar questions, I thought that maybe I should start collecting them and later put the tutorials together, so I can refer you to them when you are missing this information.
So, if you have some knitting emergencies happening, please, feel free to contact me at alina@giftofknitting.com – I’ll try my best to help and if it is quiet a general question, I’ll create a visual tutorial for more people to use it. I usually answer during 3-4 days.
One of the recent questions that repeated itself over several emails was “How To Seam Ribbing Impeccably”?
In some patterns you will find instruction to seam shoulders using an invisible horizontal seam. The horizontal seam works great for the stockinette stitch, for example; but if you are trying to put together the ribbing the seam isn’t invisible anymore – you will end up with this “jog”:
As you can see the stitch columns are not perfectly aligned, they are slightly unbalanced. On one hand – who will notice that at the shoulder seam?! But if you are a perfectionist and this “hiccup” is bothering you, there are some ways to fix it.
- First, you can ignore the knitting pattern instructions to bind off the shoulders and then seam them together. But instead place the shoulder stitches on the stitch holder and then use three-needle bind off. This way the stitch columns will be perfectly aligned. There are numerous tutorials out there that walk you through three-needle bind off, so I won’t cover it here.
- There is one more way that you can use, especially if you want to have a pretty sturdy seam. Instead of horizontal seam, you will use crochet slip chain that will align the stitches perfectly.
Let me walk you through the latter.
How to Seam Ribbing in Knitting
If you need to see a bigger image, open it in the new tab.
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- Place the pieces to be seamed with right sides facing each other. Make sure to align the titch columns.
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- You can see the bind off edge chain here. You will insert the crochet hook INTO the stitch right UNDER this bind off chain.
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- Insert the crochet hook INTO the stitch in the first piece and the corresponding stitch on the other piece of the fabric.
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- Pull the yarn through – you have one st on the crochet hook.
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- 1. In this photo you can clearly see where you are supposed to insert your crochet hook – right INTO the stitch UNDER the bind off chain. IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure to insert the crochet hook into the stitches of the same row, otherwise you will end up with uneven seam. AND – stay as close to the bind off edge as possible – this way your seam won’t end up too bulky.
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- 2. And here how it looks like on the opposite side – you inserted the crochet hook INTO the corresponding stitch on the other side.
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- 3. Draw the yarn through both pieces of fabric – two sts on the hook.
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- 4. Draw the first (closest to the hook head) st through the second st on the hook. You’ve created a slip stitch.
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- Keep repeating Steps 1-4 until the end – you can see how a chain of sts forming under the bind off edge.
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- Here is the example of 1×1 rib put together with crochet slip chain – each knit st is aligned with a knit st on the opposite piece of fabric.
And here is 2×2 rib fabric – both right and wrong sides. You can see how the jog completely disappeared and your perfectionist self can be happy now 🙂
I’m always happy to see my tutorials on your Pinterest board, if you like it, of course!
Thank you for your questions that inspired this tutorial – feel free to send more 🙂
Have a wonderful day!
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Your tutorials are always such a treat!
And always very useful. Maybe I should make a board just for you! I can’t tell you how many times I have referred to your neckline tutorial….
Oh, thank you so much, dear Zeta! I am happy they are useful for you!!!
Your are my hero. I have a ribbed project that I am going to have to seam and I have been filled with worry over the seam looking like sludge after all that knitting.
Now I can just save this post to my pins and have it at the ready.
Perfect tutorial!!
Thank you so much, dear Andi! I am so glad you’ll find this tutorial useful!
Thank you so much! I’m waiting for yarn to start a cardi that needs seaming. I want it to be just right after all the knitting and your tutorial fits the bill perfectly!
I am so glad you like it, dear Nicky! Good luck with your cardi!
Very helpful. Thanks Alina!
You are very welcome, dear Christine!
Such a great tutorial on seaming! I love seaming, I feel like it is magic. Well done on showing how to do it with ribbing.
Thank you, Julie! I made peace with seaming when I got into machine knitting. Now I love this process no less than knitting itself 🙂
While I don’t need this now, I will remember this for the future. What a great tutorial and way to respond to people’s questions!
Thank you, Lisa! Yes, I do feel it’s going to be much more helpful to answer the popular questions in the visual form!
Excellent tutorial, Alina – and perfect for me as I’m just about to start on a ribbed cardigan for my son, and I will most definitely need this technique!
Great to hear that, Katherine!!!
Excellent, excellent tutorial, as always! Thank you!
Finding a tutorial on seaming ribbed shoulders was not easy to find. I’m so glad you did this. It worked like a charm!
Thank you for your great tutorials. I was wondering the best way, or how to get the perfect edge for seaming stockinnet pattern. I have read knit every row or ski first stitch of every row , etc but I’m still confused which one to usr