Archive of Thread: Hello! Back

4 years ago
Hi everyone! My name is Zach. I'm a professor of fashion design in Ohio. 

Happy to be here and have enjoyed checking things out. 

I took machine knitting in undergrad 10+ years ago and have recently taken it up in the past few years, doing my best to remember what I could and experimenting and exploring. I will be teaching machine knitting to our students in summer 2020. This course covers the basics and I'm pretty comfortable there. However, I've recently been doing my best to really broaden my skill set and get the most mileage out of my machines. We knit on Brother/Artisan machines. 

One thing I've struggled with recently is knitting a ribbed edge and then moving to tuck stitch. Mechanically, I think I've gotten this down but have two questions: 

1. Is it possible to transition from 1x1 rib to pattern knitting without knitting any jersey between the two?

2. Tuck stich knits wide. When doing calculations, a sleeve with a 1x1 rib start for example, the math tells me to cast on so few stitches and the rib becomes so narrow, even though the math is appropriate for for tuck. How do I account for the extra stitches required to knit the rib cuff but then eliminate them when I switch to tuck so that the tuck portion doesn't come out to be massively wide!!!

Sorry this is a long post to say hello but HELLO!

Zach 

4 years ago
Hi Zach!  Welcome!

1. Since you have a Brother machine transitioning from 1x1 to stitch pattern is easier than with a Studio/Singer. The challenge would be the sequence of memorizing the pattern.

the "normal" sequence:

• You have completed your ribbing and transferred all the stitches to the main bed.
• You have your punchard or electronics set to the first row of the stitch pattern.
• Normally you would knit 1 row plain to memorize the pattern and select the pattern needles
• With the needles selected, depending on the carriage setting (tuck, slip, fairisle) the next pass of the carriage would form the pattern stitches
• You are now set to continue to knit in pattern.

If you want to eliminate that plain row, you could try to fool the machine.

• Transfer the ribber stitches to the main bed
• Set up punchcard or electronics to the first row of the stitch pattern
• Knit the plain row in waste yarn and let the machine select the needles
• Identify the needles that were selected (take a photo or note the needle numbers)
• Rip out the plain row
• Manually re-select the needles and continue knitting

I haven't tried this ... but maybe it will put you on the right track

2. You need to decrease before starting to knit the tuck. Let's say you need 75 stitches for the cuff.  You'll need fewer stitches for the tuck, so you'll need to decrease to the correct number before continuing in tuck.

In other words:
You are working with 2 gauges ... the ribbing gauge and the tuck gauge.  You could swatch for both and do your calculations for the cuff separately from the sleeve.

Ribbing gauge 6 sts per inch
Tuck gauge 4 sts per inch
Desired finished cuff = 5"

Cast on 6sts x 5" = 30 stitches
knit your cuff
transfer ribbing sts to the main bed for tuck

4sts x 5" = 20

Decrease 30-20=10 stitches even across the row

Hope this helps!

4 years ago
Thank you! I'm looking forward to trying this soon!