A while back I was looking for a stretchy bind off method for a class I was teaching on socks.
In my research I stumbled upon this article by Susanna Winter. She’s got a great knitting blog where she offers a bunch of useful tips and tricks.
Back in 2019 she tested a bunch of cast on methods to see which was the stretchiest. It was so popular that she did a little series of posts on bind offs, culminating in an update to the original post with even more bind offs.
She tested these techniques by measuring three things:
- The width of the swatch body.
- The growth of the edge width after bind off (called flare).
- The width of the edge when fully stretched horizontally.
It was such a simple method I was surprised no one had done it before!
There have been a couple of books on the topic like Cast On, Bind Off by Leslie Ann Bestor and Cast On, Bind Off by Cap Sease.
Personally I prefer Bestor’s book because it’s easier to use.
While these resources are great to have as a reference, none of them do the same kind of comparison Susanna does in her post.
So without further ado, which is the stretchiest bind off?
It’s called The Yarn Over Bind Off
This technique had an impressive 126% stretch allow it to more than double in width.
The big draw back is it was also the worst when it came to flare.
But stretchiest doesn’t mean it’s the best for every use case. A bind off still needs to have structure and enough elasticity to return to it’s original shape.
Susanna offers some suggestions based on what you’re doing near the end of the article.
However she says the best over-all stretchy bind off is Lori“s Twisty Bind Off.
It had a respectable 70% stretch and absolutely no flair.
So what do you think?
What is your favorite stretchy (or not so stretchy) bind off technique?
Hit reply and let us know.
And check out the full article with 20 different bind offs at SusannaWinter.net
Now if only someone would do the same for cast ons…
Hmmm 🤔
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