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Have you used the plating capabilities of your Brother standard knitting machine for plain stockinet stitch? If so, you've seen that if you’re using 2 colors of yarn that the front of the fabric will be one color and the back will be the other color. At our last knit meeting, one of the gals showed some of our favorite tuck dishcloths that she’d made by plating the yarns. When not plating the yarns, our tuck dishcloths develop randomly placed stripes in the fabric. Her plated dishcloths were nice solid colors and didn’t show the random stripes that we usually get with not plating. Granted both colors showed through on each side but there were no signs of unpredictable striping.
I’ve never done plating before so thought I’d give it a shot. It’s very easy to set the machine up for plating. Follow your machine user’s manual to replace the regular yarn feeder assembly in the main carriage sinker plate assembly with the plating yarn feeder assembly that came with your machine. Take out 2 screws, remove the old assembly, insert the plating yarn feeder and replace the screws. Easy.
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| 2 color tuck dishcloth with no plating |
I found that threading and unthreading the darned thing is a bit awkward however. I’m sure that’ll get easier with practice. And there’s no little latch to close to hold the front yarn in place and I had 2 instances where the front yarn hopped out of the feeder. It was my own fault though. I was wearing long, floppy sleeves when I reached across the feeder to change tensions and I must’ve brushed up against the yarn and dislodged it. I just need to be more aware and careful. Everything went just fine after that. While threading the feeder, make sure that the yarns aren’t twisted and that both yarns are properly seated as it shows in the manual.
NOTE: Check out a comment I received from Aminetta below. She very thoughtfully suggested that threading the plating yarn thru the spring wire on the upper mast of a Brother machine would hold the plating yarn back so that it doesn't pop out of the feeder slot. Thank you Aminetta.
Also, placement of the yarns in the feeder affects how your fabric will look. The yarn in the front slot will be predominant on the back side of the fabric. The yarn in the back slot will be predominant on the side visible to you while knitting in tuck.
One of the other gals at the meeting said that she uses a thin plating yarn if she’s working with some pesky yarn or when she wants a bit more body to the fabric. And another said that she used plating when making her baby blankets to give a nicer look. So there are more applications for plating than just stockinet stitch work. I think you’ll be pleased with the results of plating if you try it.
Interesting.... I particularly like the maroon and gray one. Did you use different tuck patterns throughout? I'm thinking doing random stuff would make a neat fabric for a sweater!
ReplyDeleteYes, it is interesting. Like my title says, 'who knew?' Plating isn't talked about much and apparently not used much. No, the tuck pattern is the same alternating 1x1 pattern with machine on elongate throughout....the regular dishcloth pattern.
Deleteoops, I just read your Ravelry comments and realized the one I like is the one that is NOt plated. o well. I like all the stuff you do, you know.
ReplyDeleteToo much coffee this AM? ☺
DeleteThank you so much for your nice comment.
On the Brother machine, you can run the plating yarn through the little thin wire guide on the yarn mast to hold it back at an angle, this stops it popping out
ReplyDeleteOooo, thanks for that. It's popped out a couple more times and I was being very careful about not disturbing it. I'm glad you popped in and told us about that.
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