Knitted fabric

Let’s start with an easy one

Before we can look at knitting techniques we have to understand the structure of knit fabrics. Let’s look at the commonest knitted fabric, known as stocking stitch. You make this by knitting and purling alternative rows or knitting every round. Stocking stitch fabric has distinct right and wrong sides.

This is the right side of stocking stitch fabric; it feels smooth.

This is the wrong side of stocking stitch fabric; you can feel the ridges.

Now let’s look at a single stitch, seen from the right side.

Here the same stitch is seen from the wrong side.

What has a head, two legs and no body?

A stitch has a head, a left leg, a right leg and two feet.

Knit stitches side by side

The left and right feet from adjacent stitches are connected to form each row, therefore this type of knitted fabric is known as weft knit (weft goes from the left [weft!] to the right or vice versa).  Warp knit exists but requires special machines.

The legs sit on the right side of the fabric; the legs from each stitch form a “v” shape.

While the head and feet sit on the wrong side and form the ridges.

Knit stitches standing on each other’s heads

The head of each stitch loops around the feet of the stitch above to form a column of stitches (or a wale). Here, you can see a wale from the right side.

And here is a wale from the wrong side.

And that is stocking stitch fabric. In my next post, I’ll show you how the stitches sit on knitting needles, which depends on whether you knit left- or right-handed.