December’s dolly shawl project includes an introduction to attaching a knitted edging to knitted fabric. Whereas for September’s Lace-edged Doily we sewed a completed lace edging to the woven fabric center as a separate step, the dolly shawl edging is attached to knitted fabric at the same time as the lace edging is being knitted.
As explained in Attaching your knitted edging to woven fabric, I advised the separate sewing step method for attaching knitted edging to woven fabric unless you pre-plan and knit carefully to planned gauge, so as to avoid surprise ruffling, or turning your doily into a cupped bowl, or ripping out frustrations.
On the other hand, attaching knitted edging to knitted fabric in the same step is quite doable without a lot of pre-planning or stressing out. Attaching knitted edging to knitted fabric is more forgiving because your are attaching stretchy to stretchy. Also, the lace edging serves as a stretchy bind off of the knitted fabric at the same time, making this a pretty awesome skill to know.
After knitting the body of the dolly shawl, you are ready now to work the lace edging. The edging will be knit perpendicularly to the body of the shawl, binding off a stitch of the shawl body on every other row of the garter stitch lace edging.
Binding off with a lace edging
Some points to make about the attached lace edging in the Bits of Lace Dolly Shawl pattern –
1. The yarn is NOT cut after completing the body of the shawl and prior to starting the edging, thereby eliminating the need to weave in extra ends later.
2. For the instructions in the pattern “cast on 4 sts using cable cast on”, you are using the tail of the working yarn to make the cast on stitches.
3. The Foundation Row and even-numbered rows of the Edging pattern are worked toward the body of the shawl; the last stitch of each of these rows also binds off 1 stitch of the body with an ssk.
4. Odd-numbered rows of the Edging pattern are worked away from the body of the shawl.
5. For those who have been with us at least most of the year, you might have noticed that the lace edging for the Dolly Shawl pattern is basically the same as what we did for the Lace Bug Bookmark.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to join in the conversation and letting us know how you are doing.
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So, where are the instructions for this knitted edging?
We’ve been working Bits of Lace Dolly Shawl for this month’s (December) project. There was a link to the in the first sentence of this article. Or you can go to the Free Membership Pattern area (but the December dolly shawl pattern will be free only through the end of December – i.e. December 31, 2012).
I found the instructions. Didn’t realize you had to download the pattern first. I’d like to know what yarn was used in the photo – really pretty pastel colors?
The yarn shown in the photo is Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sport in the color Childs Play.