Blocking Knitting Projects

Video Transcript

"Blocking is another part of finishing. Blocking kind of smooths your stitches to give them a finished look it takes out some irregularities in your stitches. Sometimes a pattern would ask you to block before you sew it together. Sometimes a pattern would say block it when it's sewn. So, if you're to block it, you would lay it out. You could use a ironing board. You could use a blocking board. You could use anything that you could use to push pins in and what you would do is you would lay it out smooth and you want to lay it out whatever those knitted measurements would be and this is where if you knitted it a little bit tight or a little bit loose, you would be able to block them into shape and what you would do is use your pins to lay the garment flat. So, you'll pin it down along the ends and you always want to look at the care instructions for the yarn you're using and block it according to that you know. If something was a hundred percent acrylic, you wouldn't want to use a wool setting because it will melt. So, you would take an iron if it says it a hundred percent wool and you'll put it on your steam setting and you'd put a towel or something and it would be damp and you will run your iron lightly over it and press all the stitches into place and you can kind of peek at it and make sure your getting the edge and if you block this before you're sewing it. It'll make your stitches easier to see because you could see that the knitting curls when left to its own devices and when you block it and you pin it down and then you steam it into place, it'll be a lot easier to seam."