Attaching your knitted edging to woven fabric

I was asked by Jean W. during our knit-a-long of September’s Lace-edged Doily:

Is it possible that after doing a row of single crochet around the center, can the edging be attached as it is knit?

and I answered:

It is “possible”. I will explain later in one of the weekly posts why I prefer not to do it this way. If you want to do that, just know that you will have to anticipate your exact rate of attachment (i.e. rows to sc) so that the edging lies correctly. I didn’t want to overwhelm everyone with all the possibilities and the math! If you are up to it and have already figured that out for the blocked gauge of your lace edging, of course you are free to do anything you want. I hope you will enjoy listening to the alternative way though, and some reasons that you might want to attach separately.

As promised, the following is an expanded answer for Jean and everyone.

To attach your lace edging to woven fabric, you can either

A. knit then sew later (as we’ve done for the Lace-edged Doily pattern), or

B. attach at the same time as you knit the edging.

As you might expect, there are pros and cons to each method. How you weigh those pros and cons will depend on your tolerance for

1. Some simple sewing after the lace edging has been completed.

vs.

2. The pre-planning to make sure your stretchier lace edging will lie properly against the non-stretchy woven fabric. And the possible stress while knitting to make sure you are spot-on with your planned gauge and attachment rates throughout the entire piece.

Even though I would normally shy away from sewing, I personally feel that I can knit the lace edging in a more relaxed, enjoyable manner if I knit first and attach later. I also can carry about a small strip of lace edging to work on much more easily than lace that I am simultaneously attaching to a larger piece of woven fabric.

I also felt that for people who are relatively inexperienced (or just prefer knitting where gauge is not quite so important), the less precise method of knitting first and attaching later is more forgiving and making adjustments on the fly.

On the other hand, if I am attaching lace edging to a knitted fabric, I DO prefer the attach-as-you-knit method. Attaching knitted edging to knitted fabric is more forgiving because your are attaching stretchy to stretchy. And also, the lace edging serves as a stretchy bind off of the knitted fabric at the same time. The little project I had planned to cover this is the Dolly shawl (top-down) with an attached edging as a bind off. Is this something you are still interested in us doing  sometime in the future?