Knitting Ruffles

There are many different types of ruffles that you can add to your knitting in many different ways. I'm just going to cover a few simple ruffles here. If you like ruffles, you may want to check out Knitting on the Edge by Nicky Epstein















First up is the simplest and most basic ruffle. It is just a gentle ruffle - nothing too frilly or over the top.  

All you have to do is cast on twice as many stitches as you plan to use for your main pattern. Knit a few rows - I like the look of a stockinette ruffle, but you can certainly use garter stitch if you like; or experiment with different stitches such as seed stitch.  After a few rows, you will need to decrease. Just work a row of K2tog - or P2tog even. So for instance, if you plan to work with 10 stitches and you've cast on 20, you will be removing 10 stitches on the decrease row and be left with the 10 you need for your project. 

Next is a more ruffly ruffle.  This one simply expands on the above idea. Cast on three times as many stitches as you plan to use for your main pattern, work a few rows, then decrease. You can simply work a row of K3tog or P3tog as the decrease, or you can flex your knitting brain and calculate how to work the decreases over the next two rows instead of just one. Knitting or purling 3 together can be a little tight/tricky, so you may opt for spreading the decreases out over two rows. For instance, let's again say you want to work with 10 stitches. You have 30. You could work the decreases this way: Next row, *K1, K2tog* along the row. This should leave you with 20 stitches. Next row, K2tog across the row, and you should have left the 10 stitches for your main pattern. 

Finally, you can pick up and knit along the edge of a finished piece to make the ruffle. You want to add the ruffle to a finished edge, not live stitches. Ruffles need a nice, firm edge to hold on to. If you add a ruffle to live stitches, the ruffle will spread the fabric out. 

Say you are knitting a scarf and want to add a ruffle to each end after the fact. To make the picking up easier, you may want to use the crochet cast on so that the cast on stitches are clearly defined and easy to pick up. Your standard knitted bind off also created a nice edge easy for picking up and knitting. I'm sure there are other cast ons and bind offs that will give you a nice edge to pick up, but since I typically just use the ho-hum knitted bind off and crochet cast on or long tail, I couldn't give an example of any others. 

In this particular sample, I picked up 14 stitches along my cast on edge, then knit a few rows in stockinette, then increased big time. I knit into the front and back of each stitch in the next row, as well as making a yarn over between each stitch, totaling 42 stitches. I next worked a plain row and then bound off.  This gave me a very ruffly, eyelet edge. 

You can knit the ruffle as long as you like, but the longer it is, it will turn to a flounce as opposed to a ruffle. It's really all a matter of personal taste.  So get out your yarn and needles and start playing. You might like the same method of making a ruffle in one type of yarn but not another.  Experimenting is part of the fun of knitting. 

Here is a video of the ruffles in this post.  Happy Knitting!

3 Needle Bind Off

 The Three Needle Bind Off is a great technique which joins sets of live stitches.  You can use it to bind off and join shoulder seams, among other things.   Perhaps you would like to use a particular stitch for a scarf, and would like each end of the scarf to look the same.  For instance, a lacy heart motif where the hearts face the same direction, would look better if you knit until the scarf is half as long as you want it to be, and then knit the other half, and join them using the 3 needle bind off.  This way, your scarf would look exactly the same on both ends, instead of the hearts being upside down on one end.  This is a great way to join two pieces of a scarf where a ruffle is knit on at the beginning of the fabric.  By knitting the pieces separately and then joining them in the middle, each end of your scarf will have a perfectly matching ruffle.

This technique requires a third needle in the mix.  If you don't have a third needle the same size as the one you used to knit your fabric, a size larger may be used, which will help keep your seam from being too tight and puckering the fabric.  Or, you can use a smaller needle to hold the stitches from the first piece of knitting, so that your second needle is freed up to knit the second piece and do the joining.  A more fiddly way is to place the live stitches onto a stitch holder, and then before doing the 3 needle bind off, slip them back to your second needle, then use a larger needle to bind off.  Whichever way you feel most comfortable is the way you should do it.

You will get a nice, neat invisible seam on the right sides of your fabric using this technique -  or, it can be used for decorative purposes on the right sides of the fabric.

For an invisible seam on the right sides of the fabric, you will want to make sure that the right sides are facing each other for the join.

To make the seam visible, make sure that the wrong sides of the fabric are facing each other for the join.

Make sure that you have an equal number of stitches on each needle to bind off, also.

Below is a picture of two pieces of garter fabric that have been joined using the 3 needle bind off

And here is a little sample of stockinette fabric that has been joined

I accidentally deleted the back side, showing the neat seam - you can get a look at it in the video though.

References used: Knitty Fall 2006 - Techniques with Theresa