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This is Diana Sullivan in Austin, Texas. I want to show you a shortcut mattress stitch.
I'm calling it the faster, flatter mattress stitch. I didn't invent it; I learned it from
my friends in my knitting club, back when we were on a big charity project and we had
a lot of sewing-up to do. Somebody showed me this shortcut. For starters, you're going
to use a tapestry needle to sew your knits together. It's just a blunt, big-eye needle,
available in all the hobby stores. You thread the needle. Fold the yarn over it and pinch
it between your thumb and forefinger, and then squish it back out and into the needle
eye. My yarn happens to be coming from one of my pieces of knitting. What I'm going to
do is bring it up right in the very corner of my knitting. Now I'm going to go to the
other piece and bring it up in the corner of that piece of knitting. I have the right
sides up. Now, along your knitting you have a loop and then a knot. Let's get in really
close. This is the loop right here, and here is the know. This is the very edge of the
knitting. Here is the next loop. Here is the next knot, this little teeny guy right here,
and here is the next loop. Then here is the next knot. I was over on this side, so I want
to catch the loop on this side. Here is the first loop on this side. I go through it from
top to bottom and I'm going to skip that knot and come up through the second loop, just
like that. Down the first loop, up through the second loop, and bring my yarn through,
but I'm not drawing it tight yet because I want you to be able to see. Now I'm going
to go in the same spot I came out of on the second sample, skip this knot right here,
and come up through this second loop right here and draw the yarn up, but not tight.
That way, it's easy to see that this right here is the loop I came out of. Down through
there and I come up through the next loop. I'm going to skip that little knot. Then I
go to the opposite side, just unrolling it a little with my fingers, go in this loop,
skip that knot, and come out that loop. Go back to this side, unroll it a little with
my fingers, I can see the loop that I came out of, go down in the loop. Come up in the
next loop, and as you do this, you will speed up tremendously. This is really a faster,
flatter mattress stitch because you'll be able to just go from loop to loop. After just
a few minutes practice, you will see them very easily. Every few stitches, just tighten
it up. You want to close that seam. I pull it back and forth to close the seam and get
it just right. Now I've got a nice, flat seam and I can keep going. In this loop and out
this one, over here, in, out, over here, in, out, over here, in, out. I like working with
my right side facing. I like having the awareness of how good or bad my stitches look right
away before I keep on sewing. Now, let's look at the other side of this stitch. See what
we're getting. When I say flatter, this is a very narrow little seam. If you have to,
for some reason, for instance, on our hats that we were making, fold it over for a cuff,
this isn't so thick. It's a nice finish, especially when you are using thick yarn. Just to review,
I'll do a few more stitches. In the loop, skip the knot, and come up the next loop.
Go to the other side, go in the loop you previously used, skip the knot, and come up the next
loop. After I take five or six stitches, I like to tighten it up and inspect. That's
all there is to it!