Faced Band

We have all seen those sweaters where the buttons are too heavy for the band and cause it to sag, or the tension on the button causes the band to pull unattractively. In addition, I needed a nice strong band to sew a button on so securely that no child could pull or chew it off. To solve these problems, I experimented with a faced band and came up with one that works well for me. The top side shows the ribbed band, and the underside is plain stockinette. Here's how to do it:

1. Determine the gauge of your ribbing. I just use the ribbed band on the bottom of the sweater. Don't stretch it to measure the gauge.

2. Compare the rib gauge to your garment row gauge and figure out how many stitches to pick up in how many rows. For example, my ribbing is about 5 sts/inch and the row gauge of the garment between 6 and 7 rows/inch, so I pick up 5 sts out of every 6 or 7 rows like this:

I o II o I o I o I o I o II o I o I o I o I o II

where the I's are the bars along the side and the o's are the picked-up stitches. So I pick up one stitch every row five times, then one every other row one time etc.

3. Knit the ribbed band. In worsted weight, this means 7 or 8 rows for me.

4. Knit a turning row. You are going to switch to plain stockinette stitch, but the gauge of that stitch is different from that of ribbing, so you have to decrease the stitch count. I do that by purling across a right side row like this:

Purl 4, Purl 2 tog (repeat across row)

You can just barely see the purl row in the picture.

5. Now switch to stockinette stitch and knit until the length matches that of the band.

6. Bind off loosely but not too loosely.

7. Sew band facing down on the inside with a whip stitch, not too tight. To close up the top and bottom, a whip stitch tends to look best if neatly done.

If you are making a single layer button band and still don't want the buttons to pull on the fabric, you can use a button on the top, and a button underneath and sew them on at the same time. This is tricky, but works great. I use the fashion button on the top and any plain shirt button underneath, usually smaller than the top button. Clear shirt buttons look great. The button underneath adds great stability to the band . This method wouldn't be used on kid sweaters, however, because they would just chew off the smaller button.