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(upbeat piano tones)

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(gentle instrumental music)

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- When you're sewing the sides of two knit pieces together,

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you use something called the mattress stitch.

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When you have a really long, big piece

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like two sweater sides, I usually like to

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pin the pieces together,

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so that they're like perfectly lined up.

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That's when I use my coiless safety pins

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and usually I will start

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like at the top and at the bottom.

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And then in the middle of that top and bottom, so here;

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and then in the middle of those middles

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until I have enough pins that I need for a big piece.

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This is so small, these pins are just gonna

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get in my way, so I am gonna take them out.

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Usually, when you sew two pieces of fabric together

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you're gonna use the same yarn

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that you used to knit those pieces of fabric.

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If you were clever you would just leave

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a really long tail here,

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but I'm gonna start with a whole different piece yarn,

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nice contrasting color.

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You just take a long piece of it,

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I always take about 18 inches of yarn,

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you can cut off if you haven't left long enough tails,

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and you need to use a darning needle

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for this finishing part,

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the eye has to be big enough for your yarn

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to be able to thread it through.

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And the tip is blunt,

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that means you won't stab stitch through the middle,

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you'll be able to sort of pass it underneath

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strands of yarn without stabbing through them.

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So, we thread this and I'm gonna do,

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personally one of my very favorite things,

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which is making a mattress stitch.

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I love it because it completely

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becomes invisible and you'll see.

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So you start at the bottoms of your piece

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and you're gonna do a figure eight

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to connect the bottoms of them,

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so I'm gonna come up at the bottom left corner

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of my first piece, pull my yarn through

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and then I'm gonna leave a tail, like six inch tail.

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And then, I'm gonna come up through the bottom

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left hand corner of the piece on the right.

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And that's not a figure eight yet

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until I do that another couple of times,

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so I'm gonna come back up through the bottom,

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the rightmost lower corner of this piece.

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Do you see how that's an eight right there?

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And then, back up through here,

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the same spot pretty much.

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That's just to tack this in to tack it together,

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that's gonna hold, you don't make a knot in this, no knots.

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Joan Crawford said "No wire hangers."

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And I say "No knots ever."

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All right, now this next part

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is where things get really cool.

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So, I knit this piece using

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my special nice edging techniques

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and so I have these knit stitches here.

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This first set of V's, the very last stitch

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is gonna get sucked up into my seam.

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Instead, I'm gonna be looking at the space in between

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that line of V's and this line of V's.

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What you have there is a little ladder of strands,

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one for each stitch and on this side,

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the same thing.

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Here's my outermost line of stitches

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and right inside there, between that column of V's

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and this column of V's are this little ladders of strands.

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And I'm gonna use those to do my mattress stitch.

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I have to be honest, I don't know why

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it's called a mattress stitch.

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Maybe they used this at some point

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when they were sewing up mattresses,

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I guess, but who knows.

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So I'm gonna start on this side

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and I'm gonna go under

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the first two ladder strands

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on this side and come out.

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And then, I'm gonna come to this side

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and I'm gonna go under the first

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of those two ladder strands on this side,

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and pull that through.

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And now I'm gonna go back to this side.

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I'm gonna go back in where I came out last time,

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so back into that same space

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and then back up under the next two ladder strands

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on that side.

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And then on this side, the same thing.

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Go back in where you came out,

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go underneath the next two ladder strands and through.

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I know it doesn't look that magical yet,

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but you just wait.

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So again, I go back in where I came out on this side

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and up through those two ladders

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and then on this side I go back in where I came out and up.

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Now check this out.

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When I pull that shut,

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it brings those two stitches

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right next to each other.

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You don't even see the stitches that I was making.

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And come on, is that a thing of beauty or what?

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It's perfect!

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I love the mattress stitch.

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As you keep sewing up, you can just keep tightening

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your mattress stitch as you go along.

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I didn't pin these together,

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looks maybe I have one more row

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on this side than on this side

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and if I keep doing exactly what I'm doing,

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they're not going to join up at the top,

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then that's not gonna be a good thing.

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Sometimes you can fix that.

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Now on this side I'm gonna go ahead

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and take my regular two strands,

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but on the other side, I'm only just gonna take one.

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And I really don't need to do that

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more than once on this piece.

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And if you've pinned your stuff together

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you might never need to do it,

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if you have the exact same number of rows,

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but if you have to kind of make things up a little bit

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so that they are more even than they would be.

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You can just sometimes do one ladder on one side

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and two on the other side until it kinda evens out.

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You see now, I'm just pulling the mattress stitch

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tight after every stitch.

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I mean, who would give this to someone else to do?

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This is the funnest part.