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Everyone knows that after blocking a baby sweater, the inevitable next step is seaming the baby sweater. Let me start by saying that I love to knit. I do not love to block and seam edges and weave in ends. It is all part of the process, but seaming a freshly cast off sweater is not on my list of tasks to complete quickly. After procrastinating for about 2 weeks after the sweater came off the blocking wires I finally picked the project up again.
My hesitation probably comes from the fact that I am not great at sewing or seaming my knitting together. I can join two pieces of knitting, but it looks crude and unruly. They say practice makes perfect, but it’s discouraging to knit a fantastic piece and ruin it with 28 different attempts to sew it together. Sound familiar to anyone?
Method for Seaming
Typically I avoid seams by working projects in the round whenever possible. With a little math I could have figured out how to make this sweater in the round, but I was lazy and wanted to start casting on, not doing calculations to convert from rows to rounds. I did plan ahead (a little anyway) and I cast on two extra stitches on all the pieces for the sweater. That left one selvedge stitch on each side of the pieces to use to sew the edges together. I chose a slip stitch selvedge stitch, sometimes known as the chain or twisted chain selvedge stitch. Turns out this isn’t a common one for seaming because it tends to leave a loose and unflattering seam. So much for my initial research.
After more research I found a great technique for seaming up my baby sweater, and it looks almost invisible! Here is a link to the tutorial that I found created by 10 Rows a Day. It is a fantastic tutorial with written instructions, pictures, and even a video. In the end, seaming the edges of a knitted sweater was less scary than I imagined!
The Baby Sweater is Seamed and Finished!
Enough talk, here are the results from seaming the baby sweater! I am happy with how they turned out. The seams lay flat and don’t draw attention away from the rest of the sweater. It was easy to work the sewing along the underarms and down the side of the body.
The final finished baby sweater turned out absolutely darling! It is on the small side (although the sleeves might be a tad long) so it probably won’t fit the intended recipient. I enjoyed working the pattern, Originally it started off as the Small Cable Cardigan from Lullaby Knits, by Vibe Ulrik Sondergaard. I decided at the end to finish it like the Small Cable Sweater from the same book. You can use this link to purchase a copy of the book Lullaby Knits.
I just cast off a purple cabled sweater in a larger size, so growing baby will get a sweater yet! I think my next attempt at seaming a baby sweater will go even better than this time around.
