Front and Back of Work

It's easy to tell the inside from the outside of most knitted or crocheted garment pieces by the pattern of stitches: three-dimensional work such as cables and popcorn stitches are only apparent on one side of the finished work.

Up to this  point in this blog, I've only treated stitches that look the same on both sides of the cloth, with one exception: crocheting in the round.

When you crochet or knit [note: knit, not knit and purl] in the round, the bulk of the ruffle yarn remains on one side of the work, creating a tight ruffled texture on one side and the traditional appearance of knitting or crocheting on the other. When you work flat, the yarn  stays on the same side of the hook or needles, but each time you turn the work, you alternate working from the front and the back of the garment. This causes the ruffle to appear on both sides of the work, making it difficult to use for many garments other than The Scarf.

Knitting has a basic stitch that is different from the front and back of the work: stocking (stockinette) stitch. Alternating rows of knit and purl, the structure of the knit is seen on one side of the work, while a more condensed version of the garter stitch appears on the other side. With ruffle yarns, this usually-reverse side will contain all the fabric of the ribbon or mesh, while the knit side will appear as a loosely-worked traditional knit. Viewed from this side, the technique is called reverse stockinette stitch.

Crochet is another matter. In order to get a distinctive front and back of the work, we need to make sure that we are always feeding the yarn from what will become the outside of the finished fabric. Because this means switching the ball of yarn from in back of the work (when the ruffling is facing away from you) to the front of the work (between you and the hook, when the ruffling is facing towards you), I'm referring to it as "Ball Front/Ball Back". The following video describes the technique. 

Changelog

Updated the Terminology and the Design Elements pages.

Mesh Yarns, Hairpin Lace, and Heirloom Sewing

Hairpin lace on the loom

Hairpin lace loops bound singly or in groups (top side)

Hairpin lace is a crochet technique in which long strips of fabric are created with long, even, loops on both sides of a central pair of stitches. Typically, the loops are crocheted together singly or in bunches, after which the strip is crocheted to other similar strips to create a full garment, though there are patterns in which the loops on adjacent strips are chained into each other (interwoven), or in which the crochet stitches are stabilized and the loops left free.
 


Heirloom sewing is a collection of techniques used to add lace and embroidery to special-occasion garments, often with Edwardian- or Armistice-Era design elements. Among these techniques are lace insertion, in which a strip of lace with unembellished edges is inserted into the body of a garment piece (see images here), and the underlying fabric cut away to create an element of airiness, and puffing strips, in which a long strip of fabric is gathered on both long sides, attached to lace insertion on both sides, and then inserted into a garment to create a dimensional effect (images). Several lace insertions, with or without puffing strips, may be sewn one to the other to create a broader trim known as a fancy band.

Hairpin lace, heirloom lace insertions, puffing strips, and fancy bands are similar in that they are narrow strips of material that can be combined to create a wider material which can be used either to create a garment or as decorative elements within a garment. Hairpin techniques used to edge and join Sashay Lengths of mesh yarn can be used in place of strips of hairpin lace, or in the design space of lace insertions or puffing strips, to create similar effects in knitted and crocheted garments. One pattern that uses mesh yarn in place of hairpin lace is Red Heart Yarn's Wrap and Go Shawl.

Splicing together two strips of Starbella

To splice together two strips of mesh lace Match your thread size to the threads used to make the mesh yarn (Starbella takes size 20 or 30 crochet cotton) Count the number of stitches between a thread's connections to its adjacent thread (A), and the number of stitches in which it is connected to that adjacent thread (B). For the sample of Starbella above, A = stitches and B = 2 stitches along Thread 1. Choose a steel hook size to create same number of chains/stitches per inch with crochet cotton. (In the example to the right, I used a number 12 hook and size 30 crochet cotton. I should have probably used a number 9 hook.) Chain 1/2 A, then connect to Strip 1 with B stitches. Chain 1/2 A, then connect to Strip 2 with B stitches. Repeat until you run out of length on the two strips. Detail

Interweaving two strips of Sashay To interweave two strips of yarn together Detail Pull Thread 1 of the first strip through Thread 1 of the second strip.  Insert the hook (or needle) through the next open space on Thread 1 of the second strip; pull through the loop on the hook (or needle). Insert the hook (or needle) through the next open space on Thread 1 of the first strip, pull through the loop on the hook (or needle) Repeat as long as necessary to create the required length of ruffle yarn.

Changing the Ruffle Width

The mesh structure of ruffle yarns allows us to play with the width of the ruffle — that is to say, how far it stands out from the body of the fabric. In sewing, a narrower ruffling strip makes a narrower ruffle, and that's pretty much the end of it. (Unless you're ruching the strip, which is the subject of another post.)

We can create a narrower ruffle in two ways:

1. We can work the first two, three, four, or more threads together into a thick working edge.
   

   Working the first, first two, first three, and first five threads of Sashay.

   Chain side of 5, 3, 2, and 1 worked threads

   
   
2. We can make the second, third, fourth, or middle thread as if it were the working edge, leaving Thread 1 to form a second, often shallower, double ruffle.

Top to bottom: Chained 5th thread; chained first 5 threads together; chained first 3 threads together; chained 3rd thread

Ruching

Ruching is a pleating or ruffling technique of taking equal, measured stitches diagonally across a narrow piece of trim in a zig-zag pattern and gathering the fabric along the seam line, straightening out the seam. The result is equally-sized puffs of fabric on both sides of a central seam, each side offset from the other by half the length of the zig-zag.

The orange yarn marks the ruching path	The blueish yarn marks the ruching path
The gathering (ruching) thread has been drawn straight.	Starbella Flash drawn up on ruching thread

Another method is to slip stitch along the ruching lines. This creates an equally measured path along which the yarn can be easily folded, creating two overlapping rows of petals.

Top: Starbella Flash trimmed in Lily Daisy #30 crochet cotton
Bottojm: Trendsetter Flamenco trimmed in Velnette

When wrapped spirally, ruched ruffle yarn makes a distinctive ruched rose.

Adding Your Own Edge Treatment

In addition to the embellishments that already exist on many ruffle yarns, you can add your own twist by crocheting, tatting, or using another edging technique to add color, depth, fill, or other design to your mesh yarns.

Adding crocheted edgings to Trendsetter Yarns' Flamenco.

For some, this may seem to be gilding the lily, but having two finished edges emphasizes a number of design options  —  such as double ruffles and mock hairpin lace.

Keep in mind include the size, weight, style, and fiber of your added edge. While the simple shell edges I've added above are in scale for Trendsetter Yarns' Flamenco, the wool blend fingering yarn (Fox Brand Velnette, a vintage crepe yarn from from my stash) is so heavy, comparatively, that it wants to collapse the mesh, and as a dry-clean only yarn, would shrink and full at a different rate than the mesh yarn were someone to stick it in the delicate cycle, ruining a finished garment.

Starbella Flashedged in size 30 crochet cotton

More to scale is the simple single-crochet row of size 30 crochet cotton I added to the sample of Starbella Flash in the second photo. While I've not put enough trim on that yarn to be decorative, I wanted to emphasize the unembellished border for another technique I'll be demonstrating shortly.

Design Elements: Stitch Length

Changing the length of one's stitch changes the depth of the ruffle and the thickness of the fabric. This is most apparent in crocheted work, as seen in the following examples of Flaunt:

Stitch length in Flaunt (Loops & Threads)
left to right: single, double, treble crochet

 As the stitch length increases, the visual effect of "ruffle" increases, as does the length of intervening unruffled stitch, so that in the treble crochet sample, we see distinct rows of ruffles, separated by spaces of solid work. Viewed from the edge, the front-back thickness of the work diminishes as there is less overlap between the "front side" and "back side" ruffles.

In wide-mesh yarns, this is evidenced in the tiered structure of the double crochet and treble crochet samples.

Stitch length in Starbella (Premier Yarns)
left to right: single, double, treble crochet

As gravity causes the stitches to pull in a vertical direction, these tiers can separate to the point of feeling stringy.

Starbella scarf, close up

 


Varying the stitch length can also be used to confound the row structure on dense work, as seen in this hat:

Sashay hat

Ruffles, close up Interior of hat