Fully Fashioned Shaping

Necklines, armholes and other shaped parts of our projects look much better when decreases and increases are made a few stitches away from the edge of the fabric. They look particularly nice when the edges are treated with selvedge stitches or narrow edgings.

But how do we decrease or increase stitches without ruining the edging? The answer is simple – we do it a few stitches away from the edge of the fabric

This method is often called “fully fashioned shaping”, and we can easily apply it to any project. There is only one limitation – the fully fashioned shaping is hard to do when we need to decrease or increase three or more stitches in the same spot.

Thankfully, most curved parts of our knits have those steep decreases and increases in the first few rows. By binding off or casting on several stitches at the beginning of a row, we have to sacrifice the look of that part of the edging. It is inevitable, so there is nothing to do but accept this minor imperfection.

To minimize the disruption of the edging when decreasing stitches, use the “sloped decrease” method.

The majority of shaping is a “soft” shaping with decreases and / or increases made in every other row. That’s when the fully fashioned shaping method is very useful.

In this tutorial, we’ll see how it works. 

The concept of fully fashioned shaping is the same for increasing stitches at each side of the work. We increase them right after and right before the edgings, and we do it in every other row, or in every row for a steeper shaping.

As to the way to add a new stitch, use any method you like. The well-known “make 1′ method usually does a good job.

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The full step-by-step photo tutorial about this method, is a part of the Knitting Collection #6. Once you order your copy of this collection, you will instantly receive a “big PDF” (370 pages!) with this and 43 other tutorials included in the collection.

You will also receive one e-book and two knitting patterns as a special bonus, so go ahead and get it all right now before you forget 😊

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