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. 

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.

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