Smocking Stitch
The beautiful Gather hat and cowl that Alexa designed for Knit City uses an interesting technique called smocking. This technique gathers stitches together to create a richly textured fabric.
Smocking is simple to achieve (it’s less fiddly than cabling), and all the steps are described below!
Smock 6: insert RH needle front to back between 6th and 7th stitch on LH needle, draw through a loop, place this loop on LH needle and knit it together with first stitch on the LH needle, k1, p2, k2
(RH = right hand, LH = left hand … find a full list of knitting abbreviations here)
You can break this down into 6 steps:
- insert RH needle from front to back between 6th and 7th sts on LH needle
- wrap working yarn around RH needle tip (just like when you knit)
- draw up a loop (just like when you knit)
- place this loop in LH needle
- knit the loop together with first stitch (use k2tog)
- k1, p2, k2 (work the remaining 5 sts)
Let’s take a close look at the process in photos:
There you have it! Smocking is a great, simple technique. Get the Gather pattern now, and try it out!
Having a hard time understanding the photos? There is a great video that explains various ways of using elongated stitches, including this method of smocking, here.
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Thank you for the wonderful tutorials. Your pictures and explanations t5make it so easy to learn new techniques.
Thanks for your very clear explanation of this stitch. I could not figure it out until then! Also, there are you-tubes on this but it goes so fast—-the pictures are perfect.
The cowl pattern appears not to use the Smock 5 stitch, only the Smock 6. Am I reading this correctly?
Nope, you are correct, the cowl only uses smock 6 because there are no decreases.
Thank you for the tutorial:-)
Reblogged this on The Darkness in the Light.
Love the tutorial as well and greatly lit imagery! X
Thanks for this explanation. I’ve seen another method that looked really risky because it seemed like you somehow wrapped your yarn around and around the stitches (I think with them on a cable needle?), but that would lead to uneven tension and little gathers of different widths unless you were very practiced! This way looks perfect!
J’adore je suis une grande fan de tous vos modèles….Merci pour ces belles créations….