Creating a hem

A provisional cast on creates a lovely waistband, but let’s say you want to make a hem at the end of your piece that looks the same.

Once you’ve knit the required length, you can fold up your hem to see where it meets the main piece of fabric. You can see I’ve worked a purl row on the right side to help the fabric to fold more easily and neatly.

Now that you’ve identified where the hem will fold to, you must pick up a row of stitches on the wrong side (here, the purl side) of the fabric. Using a needle the same size or a bit smaller than your working needle, follow along and pick up the purl bumps that are in the same row. Check your work by looking at the right side (it’s a bit easier to see if you’ve gone off course from the knit side). You’ll see I went back and picked up the first stitch of the row. Make sure you have the same number of stitches on both sets of needles.

Once you’ve got all your stitches ready to work, line up the working needles parallel to each other and start knitting the stitches together, one from the front needle and one from the back. You’ll notice I’m also binding off the stitches as I go as well. If you prefer, you could knit the two edges together and then do one more row to bind off the stitches if you find that easier.