This week I’m working with Universal Yarn Clean Cotton Big, a ‘tape’ style yarn made with 85% recycled cotton and 15% recycled polyester. To accompany them, I received 3 circular needles by Knitter’s Pride from their basix line. If you missed it, check out my comments about the gingham knitted swatch I knit up yesterday using Knitter’s Pride basix.
Clean Cotton Big comes in 8 solid colors and 8 marled colors
Knitter’s Pride Basix needles have smooth, clear, birch wood tips.
Quite often, when working with a bulky yarn, weaving in ends is a real challenge because it’s very difficult to weave them in without adding bulk to the knitted fabric. In this post, I’ll show you how to weave in the ends of this yarn without adding bulk.
When you cut a strand of Clean Cotton Big, you cut through the ‘stitches’ of the i-cord formations (green strand). To do my weaving in trick, you need to pull out the cut ends until you have one strand that you can pull to unravel.
First, examine the cut end (green strand, above). You’ll notice that there are many short ends in it. Fan open the end and remove the loose strands (on the right of the peach strand above).
One strand will remain attached to the yarn. Pull it to unknit the main strand of yarn.
Unknit until you’re almost to the knitted fabric. You want to leave enough length of the whole strand to be able to turn it to the back of the work before you weave in the end.
Thread the two strands of the yarn into a tapestry needle, and pick up all of the loops of the unraveled end.
Draw the strands through the loops and draw up snugly.
Turn the sample over, and pull the yarn end to the back of the work. Use the tapestry needle to secure the end to the back of the fabric, and weave in the strands, backstitching through the i-cord construction of the yarn.
The yarn end has been turned to the back, and the individual strands are being back stitched on the back of the work to secure them before trimming.
For the project in this series, I had planned to create a tote bag, but my sample taught me that Universal Yarn Clean Cotton Big yarn will be better suited to a child’s play mat, so be sure to check out my Gingham Baby Playmat in my next post.
