Making an Invisible Join at the End of the Round
Brenda K.B. AndersonDescription
Working single crochet in the round without joins makes a lovely seamless fabric. But when you fasten off after working in the round, there is a small jog or bump where the last stitch was made. This isn’t really a problem, but it does catch your eye, and it would be nice to finish off the project in a completely smooth and seamless way.
In this video, Brenda K. B. Anderson shows us how to fasten off without leaving that telltale bump along the edge. After completing her piece, she makes a slip stitch. This stitch is shorter than the single crochet stitches that she used to make the piece, so it helps to avoid that stair-step jog at the end of the round. After making the slip stitch, she cuts the yarn and uses the crochet hook to pull the ending tail all the way through the last stitch.
Brenda threads the yarn tail onto a yarn needle and inserts the needle through the following stitch from the back to the front, under both loops. She then inserts the needle in through the center-top of the last stitch (the slip stitch) and out through the wrong side of the work. She cautions us not to pull too tightly on the yarn as we make this stitch, because we want it to blend in (size-wise) with the other stitches. She instructs us to weave the tail in on the Wrong Side of the piece as we normally would.
This is a quick and easy upgrade to a regular fasten off, and it makes the edge of your work look perfectly polished! Try this technique on hats, amigurumi pieces, circular patches, polka-dots, etc. It is so satisfying to achieve that super smooth edge!
In this video, I am gonna show you how I like to fasten off after I've been working in a spiral. So as you're working around and around, maybe you're making amigurumi or a hat or something like that, if you just yarn over and fasten off, then you have this sort of jog here. It kind of sticks out. So in order to make that a little smoother, I like to first do a slip stitch. So I just insert my hook, pull up a loop, and pull through, and then you could fasten off at that point, but then you still have this sort of edge here. So what I like to do here is I just continue to pull my yarn all the way through. Well, you have to cut your yarn first, of course. And then pull it through. And then I will thread it onto my yarn needle. And then if you take a look, right here is where you're going to insert your needle underneath this, from the back through there, to the front, underneath that V of the next stitch. Like that. And don't pull too tight, because you're gonna try and make this look like another stitch, that little line right there. And then you're going to insert your needle straight down in the place where your yarn had come out before. You're gonna insert your needle straight through there and out through the back of your work here. And again, try not to pull too tightly. You want it to look about the same size and shape as the other stitches. And then you can just weave in your end like normal. But see how that looks like a very smooth end to your circle? It's hard to tell, when you're looking at it, where you actually fastened off. It makes a really great and visible join at the end of your round.
Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.
Already a member? Sign in
No Responses to “Making an Invisible Join at the End of the Round”