Tuesday Tip: Weaving In Ends, How to Clip the Tail

Last month we talked about how good finishing can make a project, and I promised you more posts focused on the all important topic of weaving in ends.

I’ve written several Tuesday Tips on seaming. We’ve looked as seaming garter stitch, shoulders, and even tackled the dreaded topic of selvedge edge and mattress stitch. No matter how wonderful your seaming, if your ends are not woven in well, your piece will look homemade. So the question is: how do you weave in ends? Last month I wrote about “skimming”, but what about that tail? Today we look at

How to Clip the Tail

I remember when I first started knitting, I would carefully weave in my ends, clip it right to the fabric and then as soon as I wore my knitting, it would pop out, I would clip it again, pop, clip, pop, clip . . . until I was out of tail!

Here’s the secret

1) After you have split the woven in your end, change direction to weave in a bit more.

2) After you finish weaving in the end, make sure to stretch the piece out to its full width.

3) Clip the tail leaving 1/4” to 1/2” of yarn.

4) With the tip of your scissor, fan out the end of the yarn.

5) Spread the yarn tail fan out and smoosh (highly technical knitting term) it down into the fabric.

originally published in Creative Knitting Magazine

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To read past Tuesday tips, just click on the Tutorial category of the blog (or here I did it for you!)

If you have a “is there a better way to do that”, or “how do you do that” question, leave me a comment, and I’ll add it to the Tuesday Tip list!