An Easy Way to Make Your Bind Off Neater

June 22, 2016 by Sarah White 2 Comments

I’m sure you’ve noticed how the very last stitch of binding off can look a little messy. It’s usually bigger than the others and you can easily tell which end is the end of the bind off for that very reason.

Yarn Sub mentions the reason for this extra big loop is because there’s extra yarn in that stitch (and every stitch of a bind off, actually), and that to neaten it up you need to get rid of or cover up that extra yarn.

The way the post explains of capturing the extra yarn is to push the loop down, then pull on the yarn end until the elongated stitch straightens out.

There are lots of different methods for dealing with this problem. I often knit the last stitch together with the stitch before it instead of doing a traditional bind off on that stitch, which also helps. If you have a different method for dealing with an ugly end to your bind off (or if you’ve tried this one) I’d love to hear about it.

[Photo via Yarn Sub.]

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Deb says
June 22, 2016 at 12:01 pm
This is the same method I use and I think it works really well.
Peta says
June 22, 2016 at 8:16 pm
The method I use, and it never fails, is when I get to the last stitch I put my right-hand needle into the last stitch from the last row and then into the last bind off stitch, knit these two together and the pass the second last stitch over the last and then finish as above. I never get a dog ear.

Have you read?

Practice Your Brioche Knitting with the Folgate Set

Brioche knitting, also sometimes known as English rib, is a popular way to add a lot of texture to knitting projects. It can be a little intimidating when you’ve never done it before, but once you get the technique down it’s lots of fun to do. And it creates the squishiest, warmest fabric, so it’s great for fall and winter accessories like these.

Mirella Moments has a whole collection of English rib knitting patterns, including the hat pictured here, a headband and an infinity scarf.

These would be super as gifts to knit now and have on hand for the holidays. You can knit all three and give them to three different people, or gift them all to one person, or keep them for yourself. No one is judging here.

All of the projects use worsted weight yarn but they come out looking chunky because of the knitting technique, which involves yarn overs that are worked together with the next stitch on the next round so there’s not a visible hole, it just makes the fabric really stretchy.

You can practice working the stitch flat if you like, but it’s not any more difficult to do in the round. If you’ve never done it before you might want to start with the headband pattern here before moving on to a bigger project.

The hat and the headband both come in three sizes for adults (the small would probably work for a teen) and the infinity scarf is one size but you could adjust it to be bigger or smaller if you like.

These projects are so pretty and relatively easy to do, too, even if you’ve never worked brioche before.

You can find all the patterns, complete with photo tutorials, at Mirella Moments: hat | headband | infinity scarf.

[Photo: Mirella Moments]

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