Easy Borders to Prevent Stockinette Stitch from Curling

Stockinette stitch is the most common fabric you’ll make in your knitting journey – when people think of the word knitting, it’s this fabric type that comes to mind. Because of the structure of this fabric with knit stitches being created on the Right Side and purl stitches being created on the Wrong Side, the Stockinette stitch tends to curl. In this video, knitting expert Jen Lucas demonstrates three simple borders to add to the side edges of your fabric to prevent it from curling.

The first border Jen creates is garter stitch. She adds an extra six stitches to the fabric, creating three edge stitches to be added to either side of the main fabric. On the Right Side, the edge stitches will be knit. One the Wrong Side of the fabric, the edge stitches will also be knit, which creates the garter stitch border. This is one of the easiest borders to add to a fabric to keep it from curling on itself.

For the second border, seed stitch is used. Jen notes that there is a variety of ways to work seed stitch, but for these borders, she prefers to work the seed stitch over an odd number of stitches. Just like the garter stitch border, she has an extra 6 stitches on the fabric, for 3 edge stitches on each side. On both the Right Side and Wrong Side of the fabric, she works p1, k1, p1 (purl one stitch, knit one stitch, purl one stitch) to create the border. She notes that you can work this same border with more stitches – for example, by adding 10 stitches to the fabric, you would have 5 stitches of seed stitch border on each side of the Stockinette stitch fabric and would work the seed stitch by working (p1, k1) twice, p1 at each side edge.

The last border Jen explores is the i-cord border. Once again, she notes you can so this in a variety of ways, but she likes to add 8 extra stitches to her fabric, for an extra 4 stitches along each edge. To work the i-cord border, Jen knits as follows:

Right Side: (Slip stitch purlwise with yarn in back) 3 times, knit to end.
Wrong Side: (Slip stitch purlwise with yarn in front) 3 times, k1, purl to the last 4 stitches, k1, p3.

There are many more edgings and borders you can add to your Stockinette stitch to prevent it from curling. Do you have a favorite?