When Cutting Your Knitting is a Good Thing

Yes, those are scissors. Cutting my knitting. Call me crazy, but this is what I had to do for this shirt.

I've been saying all along that I had to work in the round and steek the arms and back neck shaping. What you see here is the back neck. For no particular reason, I decided to do the neck first.

I won't go into a step-by-step tutorial today but I will give you an overview of the process.

Here you have the back of my camisole. The black lines mark the shoulder seams. The stitches sitting on the holder will form the center of the back neckline. (The lowest part of the scoop, if you will.)

And the circled part? That is the steek. I've knit a few extra stitches over the opening which will form a facing when we're all done. By the time I took this pic, I had already crocheted a finishing edge along both sides of the part we're going to cut. (The raised ridges.) Again, this is just an overview, so you don't have to see exactly how it was done, just recognize that they're there and we will move on.

Move on to the actual cutting between the crocheted edges:

Here I've reached the end and am cutting through the final stitch. Can you believe you can do this?!

Now that it's cut apart, the crocheted edge nicely turns toward the opening and gives a very neat edge to the facing.

Of course, besides being neat and trim, it's also holding those last two stitches together so the whole thing won't unravel.

Once I open it up, you can see how the neckline now looks quite normal. The center stitches can spread out a little bit, and the angled part on either side is the steek, now with the facings turned to the inside.

Here's a quick peak at the entire camisole:
I'm very happy with how all the colour changes came out. It's getting very close to done. I have picked up the stitches around the neckline and am working on knitting the trim. I still have to edge and cut the armhole steeks and then knit a trim around them. But it's getting there.

Enough typing, time to get back to knitting!

-christina