Well, I knit a bit of the border I'd been working on and it looked beautiful, but it just wasn't going to match the neck detail. I had briefly toyed with the idea of doing both the border and the neck detail in matching lace, but that started to create a look like my Bella Pequita, which just didn't seem right. So rip away I went and on to option 2, knitted fold over hem with picot detail.

I've taken a couple steps to avoid flipping and rolling in unattractive ways.

Firstly, I placed a lifeline into the piece where I began the hem. This will ensure I match up the grafting to the correct row on the body.

After knitting the length of the desired hem in the needle size I used for the rest of the piece, I worked a row of *p2tog, yo* around the piece.

The purls will fold nicely and the YO will give the picot effect.

Then I switched to a smaller needle size and knit one row fewer than the number of rows from the lifeline to the purl picots.

This is what it looks like.

Knitting with a smaller needle size will pull the hem just slightly towards the inside of the piece, making it less likely to flip up.

One could, at this point, bind off the stitches. The end result would be a bit of bulk at the point where the hem is grafted into place. Since this is worsted weight yarn on a form fitting piece, I don't want any extra bulk.

Instead, I leave the stitches on the needle and use a much smaller needle to pick up the stitches from the start of the hem, using the lifeline to keep me on track.

The top needle is the smaller one, the bottom needle is the main one.

Folding them together, I can start grafting the two together with Kitchner Stitch. The reason I worked one fewer rows on the bottom half of the hem is because the grafting row will count as the last row. If I hadn't done that, I'd have a bulgy hem.


I'm only a few stitches in, but this is what it looks like. While it's time consuming, it's the best way I know to have a relatively bulk free hem, if I haven't planned ahead of time to work the hem in the No-Sew manner.

Hopefully, I'll be happy with the results and will have a nearly finished piece to show you soon.

In unrelated news, I got myself a model to use for my design proposal drawings.

She seems pleased with the arrangement.

And, Leo and I went out to lunch yesterday. I just thought I'd post a picture because he looks oh-so-handsome in his new sweatshirt.