Tutorial: Add Smocking After You Knit

Sometimes we knit something in plain stockinette and then decide that we don’t want it to be so plain after all. There are lots of ways to embroider or embellish the surface of a knit object, but if your garment is also a bit boxier than you’d like you can relatively easily add smocking after the knitting is done both to draw in the work and add interest and texture.

Classic Elite Yarns has a great little tutorial on how to do just that. All you have to do is run some yarn through stitches that are a few stitches apart, pull tight on the back and weave in the ends. It kind of makes me want to knit something big on purpose just so I can add a bit of pretty.

Have you ever worked smocking in this way or the more traditional way? What sort of project did you use it on? Spill it!

[Photo by Classic Elite Yarns.]

For the past few years I’ve taken part in a Christmas in July blog hop that encourages people to get a jump on their making for holiday gifts.

I love to use yarn I already have for these projects in the hope that people will consider what they already have that they can use to make projects for themselves or to give as gifts.

This year it was a couple of knit baskets made using partial balls of yarn left in my stash from other projects.

They use the same basic pattern but the first one is made with two colors of bulky yarn, and the second used two strands of worsted weight yarn held together, which made the gauge about the same, but I cast on fewer stitches to make a smaller version.

The bottom of the basket is square, though you can make them rectangular if you’d rather. Then I just knit up the sides in rounds until I was about to run out of yarn. This gave both baskets rather short sides — maybe more like a tray than a basket — but you can keep knitting as long as you like to make the sides of your basket as tall as you want.

They’re worked in seed stitch, which keeps the edges from curling and adds a nice texture to the baskets.

Of course this also allows you to use even more odd balls from your stash. I’d love to make a big one someday combining lots of different yarn. I mean, I’d probably use it to store more yarn, but that’s a fine thing to do.

As it is, these little trays are great for sitting on your desk or bedside table to hold little things that always seem to appear there. I like to use one to hold the supplies for whatever project I’m working on, things like little scissors, my tape measure, a crochet hook, etc.

And they would make good gifts on their own or as a container to hold some other goodies if you like.

You can find the free pattern for these stash busting baskets over at Our Daily Craft.

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