Day 7: Bind Off & Finishing

Hi there welcome back to our 14 day learn to knit series here at The Knitting Circle. My name is Jen Lucas, and in this lesson, I'd like to show you how to bind off your knitting as well as how to weave in your ends or your yarn tales when you're done with your project. Let's take a look. Now we're ready to bind off our knitting and weave in our ends. Now that we've learned a few stitches, we are ready to end off our little practice swatches and maybe cast on for our first project or continue practicing. So just like casting on, there are lots of ways that you can bind off your knitting, I'mma go ahead and just show you a standard knit wise bind off, this is the one that everybody learns when they're first learning to knit, and if you know how to do this one, that's great you're a knitter and you can make any project. Where some of the other bind offs will come into play is if you want to explore having a bind off that's more stretchy or more decorative, there are lots of different types of find offs that are really great for that, but this is just the great standard one that everybody learns it's the first one everybody learns and it's the perfect way to end off just about any knitting project. So like the other videos I'mma demonstrate how to do a few stitches using the English method with the yarn in my right hand and then a few stitches with the yarn in my left hand, using the continental method. So let's go ahead and start. So I just have a little swatch here, of garter stitch where I've been knitting every row. Here's a finished swatch here so what we're gonna be creating, is this final edge up here, and that will give us a nice clean edge for the top of our fabric. So using the English method, to do a standard bind off, we're going to knit one stitch, knit a second stitch, and then we're gonna pass, the first stitch over the second stitch. So to do that we're gonna take our left needle and insert it like this, into that stitch, the right most stitch, and we're gonna bring it towards the tip of the needle and we're gonna bring it up and over that second stitch, so that we've left one stitch on the needle, and we've passed that other one up and off, and then we knit a stitch, and then we pass the first stitch up and over and off. So we have one stitch left on the needle, and we would just keep working in this way. And so if you're knitting using the continental method with the yarn in your left hand, it's exactly the same, you get started the exact same way where you're knitting two stitches, and then passing the first one over, and then you continue in the same manner so just flipping, flipping the yarn to my other hand, we're just knitting a stitch, and passing it over. It's the same exact thing, knitting a stitch, passing it over. So it doesn't matter which hand, you have your yarn in. It's worked in the exact same way you're just knitting, passing over, knitting, and passing over. And then when you get to the last stitch, you're gonna knit, pass over, and you're left with one final stitch. So now we need to deal with that final stitch. So first what we're gonna do, is we're gonna take our scissors, and we're going to cut leaving a tail just like at the beginning six to eight inches or so, I don't really measure it, just kind of eyeball, and then you can just pull the yarn up, and through and that secures it off there it kinda makes like a tiny little nut. And so now our knitting is not going anywhere this was the yarn from the cast on. And so we just have this little swatch here. So now we need to weave in the ends and so what does that mean? We're going to take our tapestry or yarn needle, and we're going to tuck the ends into the fabric. So I have my yarn needle here, and like we talked about in our knitting supplies video there's all different types of these tapestry needles but this is the one I like. So am just gonna flip it over so am on the wrong side of the work 'cause typically you're gonna want to weave in your ends on the wrong side of your work so if they do start to come up out a little bit it's on the private side or wrong side of your fabric, we're just gonna go ahead and thread the tapestry needle I like to fold the yarn just over the tapestry needle and pinch it, and then stick it through the eye that's the easiest way especially when dealing with slightly thicker yarn. So to weave in the ends, for me personally I feel like this is a little bit more of an art than a science, you're just gonna sort of follow the stitches. So I like to just sort of come up a little bit away from the cast on, and then I'm just sort of following the path of the stitches like this. Depending on the fiber content, if your yarn is really slippery, and then you stretch your fabric out, you may find that your end sort of starts to come out a little bit. Sometimes if the yarn is thicker like I have here, I actually will take my tapestry needle and split the plies of the yarn, to weave in the end a little bit that seems to help it stay little bit more secure. You also can come up to the next row, follow a path up here, you just wanna weave in a few inches, just so that as it stretches, your end is not gonna come all the way back out. And so once we have that end woven in, we're still gonna have a little bit of a tail, and so we'll just take our scissors and carefully snip it. And so there you go and then you can see now this is where we had woven it in, it's pretty invisible and from the front, you can't see it at all. And so now we can just do the same thing with this other tail, and so you would do this with any ends that you have. If you had to add another ball of yarn, if you used another color anything like that. You're just gonna bring it down, and then just work through the stitches, you just don't wanna pull so tight that you start distorting your fabric in any way. You just wanna keep it kind of loose in a similar tension to what your stitches feel like. And again with the thicker yarn, sometimes I'll just try to split the plies a little bit, 'cause that does seem to keep it a little bit more secure. And there we go. And then again, we'll just take our scissors here and snip, and then I'll give it just like a little bit of a tug, sometimes here I have a little bit more of a tail sticking out. You just wanna be really careful that you're not cutting into your knitting. Here we go. And so that's again the wrong side and then if we look at it from the right side, you can't even see it, and even from the wrong side it's really pretty hard to see especially when obviously the yard is all the same color, but there you go that's weaving in the ends, and so now you've learned how to cast on knit and purl we've worked a few different stitch patterns in knit and purl, and now we've learned to bind off and weave in the end, so we're really moving along here in our knitting journey, and in the next couple of videos am gonna show you how to do a few more stitches and then we're gonna cast on for our first project. There you go, now you've learned how to cast on, knit, purl and bind off. Am gonna review a couple more stitches in the coming lessons, and then we'll be ready to cast on our curl, I look forward to seeing you back here tomorrow, to learn the yarn over.