Tuesday Tip – Weaving in Ends: Using The Tails

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? I wrote about “skimming”, and last month I wrote about how to clip the tail, but what USING that tail? Today we look at

How to Close the Gap in Knitting

I used to look on my knitting tail as something useless, something I had to get rid of. Now I see, the knitting tail is something we can use!

There are many times I use my tail to close up a gap. When knitting top down or bottom up in the round, you can use the tail to create a duplicate stitch to fill those annoying holes.

You can also use the tail to close the gap created when working in the round, and this is very similar to how I used it here to close the gap created when you bind off in the middle of the row (especially if you don’t know my trick to binding off in the middle of the row – taught in Patty’s Knitting Bag of Tricks)

Typical gap you get when binding off in the middle of the row

1) Put the tail from the new ball of yarn on a tapestry needle and put through last stitch worked before the bind off.

2) Bring the tapestry needle under the legs of the first bound off stitch

3) Bring needle back down in the same place the needle came out to form a new “braid”.

Now weave in the rest of the tail now that the gap has been closed

Ta Da. Way more better!

This is very similar to using the tail to close the gap when working in the round

1. Put the tail from the last stitch bound off on a tapestry needle.
2. Bring the tapestry needle under the legs of the first stitch bound off.
3. Bring the tapestry needle back down in the same place the yarn started to form your last “bound off stitch”.

For more ways to weave in your ends (and join new balls, and tons more), check out

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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!