I make my interest in using your yarn stash pretty clear (I mean, I have actually written an ebook about it), and one great way to use your stash is to make sure that you use as much of the yarn you have in a particular project as you can so you won’t add leftover yarn to your stash.
Since I’m often making things up as I go along (whether that’s because I’m designing on the fly or working from a pattern without being sure I have enough yarn to make it) I’ve come up with a few tips that might help you if you’re trying to use all the yarn you have on a particular project.
The story behind this post was that I had some really great yarn I wanted to make into a tank top. I found a pattern (the tank top from KnitCroAddict) and I thought I had enough yarn based on what the pattern called for. But I also tend to like tops to be longer than a lot of patterns suggest, so I wanted to make sure I could make my top as long as possible without running out of yarn.
The main strategy that helps with this process is to do whatever finishing you can before the garment is actually finished. If you’re knitting a sweater, knit the sleeves first. In this case it was knitting the edgings on the neckline and the armholes.
Of course it’s also possible to work in a different yarn in a stripe or another way if you need your yarn to go farther, this was more about wanting to use all of a great yarn that I had and not really having anything that went with it to add in.
Check out my other strategies for using all the yarn and how my tank top turned out over at Our Daily Craft.
Knitting Patterns to Use Your Bulky Yarn Stash
