Edgy Knitting

It’s the fine details that really enhance the look of our finished knits. Carefully crafted seams, evenly picked-up stitches around necklines, and even a cast on that make stitches appear to start from thin air take our hand knits from craft to finely crafted. Edge treatments, or selvedges, are another way to kick our knitting up a notch.

The word has two spellings, selvedge and selvage. I prefer selvedge, because the word originates from the Old English for “self edge” making this spelling easy to remember. Sewists deal with selvedges all the time. In sewing, selvedges are the sides of the fabric formed where the threads get packed together on the loom during the weaving process. They are almost always cut away and discarded.

Carla A. Canonico

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