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A lot of times in my tutorials and in my patterns I recommend steam blocking.
It’s something I talk about a lot, but I don’t think I’ve ever really demonstrated
how to do it.
Um, regular blocking usually refers to completely soaking your knitted item, finished knitted
item, in wool wash and soap, and then setting it out flat to dry, just the way that you
want it.
But there are some times where you want things blocked out a little bit, but you don’t
really have to take the time to do a full wet block for it.
For example, well, two examples I can think of off the top of my head.
One is knitted lace. As I’m knitting it, I want to see the pattern emerge, and see
it look good, so I frequently take it to my blocking board, with the iron, and steam it
out a little bit, flatten it out, so I can see how pretty is as I’m knitting it, instead
of waiting for the whole thing to be finished.
That’s kind of just me.
But the way that this is really practical, is when you’re knitting something that needs
to be seamed.
For instance, a sweater that’s knit in pieces, you know, front, sleeves back.
And you’re going to be seaming the whole thing together. And the pieces right after
you knit them are usually a curly wrinkled mess.
So if you can steam them out to the schematics in the pattern, it’s going to be much easier
to seam the whole thing together when they’re flat.
Well, let’s just take a look at this.
This here is a sleeve.
This is the top of the sleeve and I don’t have room to show you the whole thing, but
it’s not really that important.
This is from my Ombre Dyed Sweater pattern, and in the pattern I give you the exact measurements
for what your knitting should be, which makes it really easy to steam it out, because you
can just follow the directions here.
So, again, the blocking board is helpful, because I have this grid on here to make things
really easy.
And what I’m going to do is just pin this out, 1, 2, 3 and a half.
To the measurements in the schematics.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Without going in to too much detail about the size of this or anything, I’m just following
the pattern.
And of course, I would follow this down all the way to the bottom of the sleeve, and measure
that whole thing out.
But here I go, I’ve got the whole sleeve cap pinned out.
And then I’m going to take the iron, on the highest setting of steam, and apply steam
like this without pressing down.
This is especially effective if you’re using wool.
Wool just does whatever you want it to when you apply steam to it.
So here I can flatten the stitches out, and if my stitches are a little bit wonky, I can
pat them down and flatten them out and make them look really good.
And when you get your pieces finished like this, you just let them cool this way, and
then they will be flat, they will look nice, and they will be easier to seam.
Now one thing I want to show you, one trick.
If you’re working with stockinette and it’s really curling up on you, it is easier to
flip it over and do it from the other side.
You see the stockinette is curling in this way.
So it’s easier to pin it out if I can unroll it this way.
The measurements are all the same, of course.
It’s just easier to pin it this way if the stockinette is really curling.
Anyway, that’s it. I’m finally telling you exactly what I mean when I stay steam
blocking.
Good luck.
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