Working a hem with a three-needle bind off and I-cord | Eyelet Skirt

Now that we’ve knit through the upper section of the Eyelet Skirt using Fibra Natura FLAX yarn, it’s time to add the hem and the I-cord drawstring. After doing the much more complex lace work and decreasing, this is comparatively quite simple.

The hem is worked in stocking stitch, with one elongated stitch that forms the opening of the drawstring. This is worked by wrapping the yarn twice around the needle when knitting, then dropping it on the next row – the slack in the yarn creates a larger stitch that the drawstring can fit through. I found that since the Fibra Natura FLAX is a little bit of a rougher yarn (before washing), the opening wasn’t quite as large as I expected; the yarn caught on itself a little rather than dropping down smoothly. But it was a big enough gap to get the drawstring through, which is the important part.

The pattern says to mark the row where the hem will be joined after it’s folded overusing a piece of scrap yarn. Instead, I chose to mark various stitches of that row on the Wrong Side of the work with the UNIQUE Knitting Split Ring Markers, rather than feeding a piece of scrap yarn through every stitch as I went. However, I made one miscalculation here. It was far, far easier for me to see and pick up the stitches for the hem on the Right Side of the work.

So that’s what I did. I picked up the stitches on the Right Side of the work, anyway. The stitch markers helped but were not as helpful as they could’ve been – if I thought ahead, I would’ve put them on the Right Side of the work. Oh well!

The issue with picking up stitches on the Right Side of the work is that the hem is bound to the Wrong Side of the work with a three-needle bind off, which made things interesting. To fix that problem, once I had all my stitches picked up, I flipped the skirt inside out, inserted the needle tip of the 4mm Clover Bamboo Circular Needle (which is the needle I used to pick up the stitches since the 3.5mm Clover Bamboo Circular Needle was still in the main body of the skirt) behind the work with the picked up stitches still on the needle. That gave me a nice line of picked-up purl stitches on the Wrong Side to work the three-needle bind off and close off the hem.

Once I did the three-needle bind off, it was a simple matter of knitting up the I-cord and inserting it into the eyelet for the hem. Many people will tell you that you have to use double pointed needles to work an I-cord, but that’s not true at all. You can also use circular needles. I used the same Clover Bamboo Circular Needles I used to make the skirt (no need to look about for a set of double pointed needles when I had something absolutely useful right at hand!). It’s exactly the same as working an I-cord with double pointed needles; you just have to slide the stitches a touch further along the needle cable and onto the other end of your circular needle.

Once I got the I-cord done, I fed it through into the hem.

I use a safety pin for this, and it’s not hard at all – just put the safety pin into the end of the I-cord, then worm the safety pin along the tube created by the bound off hem until you go all the way around! The pattern notes that you can use elastic instead of a drawstring. If that’s what you choose, stitch the ends of your elastic together once you feed it through, then stitch the eyelet closed so the elastic doesn’t show.

If you followed along this far, congratulations, you now have a finished Eyelet Skirt; a skirt that can go through the washer and dryer since Fibra Natura FLAX is a 100% linen yarn! I’ve already made good use of this skirt in our hot and humid summer weather, and got some compliments on it, too!

This is part 5 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 4: Why change needle sizes in a knitting pattern? What does it do?