Yesterday I mentioned that the easiest way to add an edging onto a knitting project — if it’s not knit as you work the rest of the project, anyway — is to crochet a border. But if you don’t like the look of crochet or don’t know how to do it, there are other options.
The most common way to add a border as you go is to cast on some number of extra stitches at the edge of the project (how many depends on the pattern stitch requirement and the width of border you want), work across all but one of those stitches, then knit that last stitch together with the first stitch of the project, or use the decrease of your choice.
Working those two stitches together makes the border anchored to the rest of the project so that there’s no finishing to do later other than the weaving in of ends.
Miriam Felton has an excellent, photo-filled tutorial of how to do this on her website, which will show you how to go about adding an edging as you bind off. This is perfect for the edges of shawls, the bottoms of top-down sweaters, the tops of bottom up bags, etc.
Have you ever knit a border onto a piece of knitting? I’d love to hear how it went!
[Photo via Miriam Felton.]
