Archive of Thread: Seaming on the machine Back

2 years ago
A few weeks ago I promised to try seaming a garment on the machine and let you all know how I got on.  Well, apologies for the delay, but I have now had the chance for a first attempt and have to say that I am not very happy with it.

The only garment I had to try it on was a raglan sweater knit in Aran yarn on my Taitexma mid-gauge.  I picked up the edge stitches of one of the raglan seams, pulled all needles to UWP and closed the latches.  The main tension being 7, I tried to knit across at T8 but the carriage jammed.  I have found before that the Taitexma can be quite fussy about knitting together 2 sets of stitches - more so than my Brother machines.   I resorted to knitting that row by laying the yarn in and pulling the needles back  manually slowed down the process a lot.

It would also have been very slow - and rather ugly I think, but I may be wrong - to do the "usual" type of cast-off where you move a stitch, bind off the 2, move the stitch etc.  I prefer wherever possibly to do a latch-tool bind-off which is speedy and neat.  I used the loosest possibly tension (10.1) and bound off the stitches.

On examination of the seam, first of all I noticed that in about 3 places I had not picked up the edge stitch but got half the edge stitch and half the next one instead.  It looked bad and I would not be happy to finish a garment like that.  Secondly, there was a tendency for the "ladder" between the two pieces to.show.  With a mattress stitched raglan seam the two pieces butt together without the seam being at all visible unless you pull the pieces sideways.

This was a fairly short seam and I didn't have a problem matching the pieces.  As I hadn't known when knitting that I would be doing this, I hadn't put markers in which would definitely be advisable for a long seam if there is no pattern or change of colour to guide you.

I am going to undo this raglan seam and sew it, and the rest of the sweater, with mattress stitch.  All things considered, I think the method is perhaps not suitable for heavier yarns.  However, when I next have a garment in finer yarn knitted on my KH-940 I will try seaming on the machine again.  Maybe the first joining row needs to be tighter or maybe it should be looser and latched off without knitting the second row.  There is more experimenting to be done.

I'll be back!

Jenny

2 years ago

HI Jenny!

Thanks for the update.
Yes, the "joining" row needs to be as tight as possible.

Consider picking up only 1 leg of each stitch, instead of the entire stitch - it might make the "joining" row easier to knit with the carriage.
An explanation of this is in the video "seaming stiches to rows".  Talks about picking up the inside loop.

https://www.knititnow.com/learn/tutorial/578/seaming-stitches-to-rows

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When picking up the stitches you have to be careful to to do this and distorting the seam.

 

My favorite bind off is where you knit the first part by making large stitches, then pull stitch thru stitch.
I like it so much I did 2 videos 

https://www.knititnow.com/learn/tutorial/938/favorite-bind-off
https://www.knititnow.com/learn/tutorial/812/favorite-bind-off

Thanks again for documenting your findings, I'm sure you'll inspire other knitters to try seaming on the machine.  This is the ONLY seaming method some knitters use.

Sue