WIP Wednesday - Steeking the Masterpiece

After knitting my Masterpiece cardigan in the round, it's now time to cut it open!

Oh, how many ends there were to weave in. But eventually I got them all!

And of course the pockets needed to be sewn onto the inside of the cardigan.

To make sure that they will be straight and also to make seaming the pockets easier for myself, I threaded some waste yarn along the edges (or where they should be).
This way it's very easy to not get confused between all the purl bums and stay in a straight line when seaming.
 

Next step: washing and blocking!


I've got to say, this cardigan became so heavy when it was wet! So it wasn't that easy to squeeze all the water out of it.
I also rolled it up in several towels afterwards to get rid of even more excess water.

And only two days later, the cardigan had finally dried :)

Now I could move forward to cutting it open! How exciting! :)

So, in theory, when intending to steek a knitted garment, you allow some extra stiches where you want to steek (cut open). I added five extra stiches along the middle in the front of my cardigan.
Then the edges to the left and right of the "cut-to-be" have to be secured. Since I am using a superwash treated yarn (which is not as nice as untreated wool to use for stranding and steeking, but I still wanted to use it), I used my sewing machine (instead of the crochet method). I have sewn knitted pieces with the sewing machine before, but have not made such a long seam on a knitted garment.

So, I still was quite nervous. I mean I've spend so many hours knitting this piece and now I need to cut it all the way down in order to make it the cardigan it's intended to become...

In fact, I was so nervous (you know I haven't steeked anything before) that I needed to try sewing and cuting this fabric before I could steek the actual Masterpiece. (and of course I needed to make sure it will be beautiful in the end)
So, I knitted some little pieces to practice on and tried different stiches and played around with thread tension and stich length and width to find the ideal setting of my sewing machine.


 
Because it worked so well for the pockets, I threaded some waste yarn through the middle stich of my five steek stiches.
This is great help for orientation! I can always see where I am (or supposed to be ;) ) which really helps when suqeezing the cardigan through the sewing machine.
It all went surprisingly well! I didn't get stuck once with the strands in the feed dog, which was my biggest fear.

I used a medium sized zigzag stich and sewed two times left and right of the marked middle stich.

And then my hands became sweaty and my heart started beating a little bit faster - time to cut! :)

At this point, it is most important to have really sharp scissors. And of course to cut straight and not into the seams. Otherwise, this is the easiest part (theoretically).

And I did it! I steeked my first garment! :)

Now that I have done it once, I would definately do it again! It really is a super great technique. This saved me so much time and first of all headache being able to knit this stranded cardigan in the round! I don't see why one wouldn't do it like this.

It really was scarry, but now that all worked out and I can see the result, I think there's not so much to be afraid of.
So, I can definately recommend steeking! And I will absolutely use this technique again. (also it was very fun to have this kind of little thrill :) )

Next thing on the list are the button bands! :)





Have you steeked a garment? Do you like steeking? What is your experience? If you want, you're welcome to leave me a comment!

Have a wonderful week everyone!
Love,
Stefanie