This week, Manju and Miro were consumed with curiosity as I took hundreds of pins and reblocked my old sweater, Wisdom. They were particularly intrigued by the metal perpendicular ruler I used to ensure that each edge of my cardigan was pinned in a perfect straight line.
“Why bother doing this?” their curious eyes seemed to ask. And part of me agreed with them. After all, I made Wisdom years ago, and shouldn’t I be putting all my efforts into finishing my latest, greatest cardigan, Touch? Then again, I have been wearing Wisdom constantly since I knitted it in 2011, and as tough as the felted tweed yarn is, I couldn’t help noticing the edges of the cardigan need a tuneup.
Do you see how the top collar corner sags down, like a dog-eared page in a book? That curling corner drives me crazy! Not to mention that the stress of wearing it buttoned over the years has led the edge to be as bumpy and wiggly as all get out. In the past, I have ignored issues like this with my hand knits because I had this wacky idea that once I put all the effort into knitting and assembling my garments they should take care of themselves. But when I embroiled myself in the 100 day challenge where I wore a garment I’d hand-knitted every day for 100 days, I discovered that knits don’t just exist in a time vacuum, endlessly preserved in mint condition. They wear and stretch and change over time. Considering that Wisdom is my favorite cardigan, I decided I should invest time and care into refurbishing it, instead of tossing it aside for the exciting, fresh knit of the day. So below you will find the steps I am taking to make it good as new, possibly better!
1. Wash the cardigan and lay it on a blocking surface, still damp.
2. Using a perpendicular level, line up the bottom of the cardigan to the bottom of the perpendicular level. The straight edge of the side of the level will become your guide for pinning the edges of your cardigan so they are straight all the way down on both sides. To ensure the evenness of both sides of the cardigan in relation to each other, I blocked it onto an old pillow and secured it with a ton of quilting pins.
3. Be patient, and wait for it to air dry:
4. Remove the pins. See how straight the edges have become:
I was very satisfied with the improved appearance of Wisdom, but I knew the turned-down collar edge would return unless I reinforced it somehow. Felted tweed knitted on size 3 needles is a very light fabric, and I didn’t want to burden it with a heavy reinforcement sewed behind the button and buttonhole bands. My sewing teacher suggested that I use the yarn itself to create some kind of braided trim which I could then sew to the back of the button and buttonhole bands, and that is what I did:
Using a small crochet hook and one strand of leftover felted tweed from my original project (I save my leftovers for future sweater repairs) I created a simple crocheted chain. I pinned the chain ¼ inch away from the edge of each side of the cardigan front, and invisibly hand-stitched it on both sides. Voilà!
We will see how well the crocheted chain reinforces the edge over time. For now, I have a beautiful straight edge to my cardigan fronts which I am really enjoying.
As part of my heirloom approach to creating quality knitwear, I am going to be experimenting with a variety of edge reinforcers for cardigans, and my next one will be a ribbon which I’ll hand-sew behind the button and button-hole bands of Touch. But what I learned from this first experiment is that blocking is easy enough that everyone should consider doing it periodically to maintain well-loved knits, even if you don't have feline assistants on hand.