No-sew method for adding a decorative edge to your projects

Decorative edge knit onto a blanket.  WIP

I hate seaming… So much so that I avoid it whenever possible. When knitting blankets or something that requires some sort of finished edge, I usually try to incorporate the edging or border into my pattern, but that’s not always possible. This particular blanket it wasn’t possible and I really debated whether or not to but a border on it. I put it away for a while and finally decided it needed something.

First I thought about picking up the stitches all the way around and knitting a simple garter stitch border, but really I wanted something a little fancier than that. I looked through my stitch dictionary and found a border I really liked, but it would need to be seamed on. What I wanted to be able to do, was knit the border and attach it to the blanket at the same time.

I spent the better part of a day searching online for directions on how to do just that, but came up with nothing. I knew there had to be a way and if I couldn’t find it online, I’d have to come up with a solution on my own. I played around with different ideas and finally found one that works.

• Pick your border pattern, and cast on desired number of stitches on a DPN. My border was originally 4 stitches wide, but I added 10 more stitches to make it a little wider. I placed a stitch marker between the 4 edge stitches and the 10 I added so I could keep track of when to start knitting in pattern.
• Remove the last cast on stitch but keep it live, insert needle, from the wrong side of the blanket, into an edge stitch, place live cast on stitch back on needle.

Cast on needle with the picked up blanket stitch

• Pass the blanket stitch over, and knit your first row, away from blanket edge

• Turn your work, blanket and all and knit back towards the blanket until you come to the last stich

• Pick up the next blanket edge stitch, knit the last stitch, pass the blanket stitch over

Picking up next blanket stitch

• Turn your work, knit away and repeat.  

Depending on the size of your blanket, it could take a while to knit the border all the way around, but your omitting the seaming and you’ll know exactly when to stop knitting when the ends meet. The only seaming you’ll need to do is the two ends together with the method of your choice.  Weave in tails.