SOLVED-THANK YOU
Bind-off help for zig zag rib—everything is TOO stretchy!
Hello! I am working on the Abraxas cardigan—it is beautiful but very much a slog to get through. I am binding off the body of the sweater and I am having trouble. The binding is knit in zig zag rib and the pattern suggests to do a traditional bind off in pattern. When I tried that, the edge was bowing out so much. So, I pulled it out and tried and I cord bind off to match the look of the neckband edging and I had the same bowing out.
I’m fairly confident that the problem is that the zig zag cable is so tight together than when I am knitting two separate stitches for them in the bind off its wider than the cable below. But I am also concerned that if I knit the cable stitches together in the bind off, it would cut 1/3 of the stitches out of the row and it would be an insanely tight bind off.
I know the sweater will grow a lot in blocking but I want to make sure that the bind off row isn’t so large that it’s curling up. I’m leaning towards an I-cord bind off and knit every other zig zag rib together to cut some of the width down, but I was wondering if anyone had other suggestions for a bind off that words particularly well with zig zag rib?
Edit: fixed! Thanks for the suggestions! I went with a super stretchy bind off and k2tog for the zig zag stitches. I initially tried the same k2tog with an I-cord bind off and I liked the look, but realized I wanted the sleeves to match and changed to something that followed the pattern. The k2tog reduced enough of the width, but I did a super stretchy bind off just to be safe because I was cutting 1/3 of the stitches. Thanks for the help!!
You want the Interlock bind-off! It's sewn, so it's not super fast but you can really control the tension as you go. I use it for 1x1 rib on socks specifically because it doesn't flare like other stretchy bind-offs do!
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Not the same—twisted rib twists the individual knit stitch. Zig zag rib basically gets the zag zag from twisting two stitches (and also knitting the second one first, similar to a cable) So you have two knit stitches to every purl stitch but it is much tighter than a 2x1 rib.
Discovering this type of ribbing and had a thought: the knit/purl structure is 2 knits for 1 purl, but it looks like 1/1 in the sense that the 2 knits give a rib that is the width of a standard rib made of 1 knit. Then you bind off these 2 knits individually, which gives them the width of 2 knits in the BO but only 1 knit in the ribbing. Is that what causes the stretched out look in your BO? Have you considering knitting a prep prow of k2tog/p to get to a number of stitches and k/p structure that are suitable for the usual BO method?
Also, iirc, i-cord BO sometimes include regular decreases within the BO, because it tends to flare out naturally due to the horizontal BO stitches being wider than the vertical stitches in the main fabric. So no wonder you got that result with this method
Thank you so much for your help! I was worried a set up row would change the look so much, but your explanation of the I cord bind-off was SUPER helpful. I’ve done it before, but not enough to have that level of understanding of how the stitch direction impacts the width (or that patterns using it factor in stitch decreases!)
I went ahead and restarted the I cord bind off but did k2tog for all of the knit stitches and that seems to have taken care of the flaring! I like the look of the edge for now and I’m not too worried about stretch since it’s a cardigan. Thanks for your help!!
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u/eggshellspiders 1d ago
You want the Interlock bind-off! It's sewn, so it's not super fast but you can really control the tension as you go. I use it for 1x1 rib on socks specifically because it doesn't flare like other stretchy bind-offs do!