This stitch originally posted on March 20, 2012

I love magic. I can remember watching Lance Burton perform this illusion where he ends up defending this woman at a restaurant by fencing with a mysterious masked man. What ends up happening blew my young mind! (You can see what I mean here)

Ever since then I’ve always tried to find cool tricks to impress my friends. Some have been more impressive than others. My brother wouldn’t let me try to stab him with a sword to make him disappear, but I did find a Svengali card deck that let me read other peoples cards. Strangely no one liked playing go fish with me.

Well today I’m going to show you a knitting trick that will amaze and astound your friends. You’ll be able to make garter stitch do some pretty interesting things when you learn how to make a miter square.

This video knitting tutorial will help you learn how to knit a mitered square. This technique is used to create square pieces of fabric when knitting flat. By decreasing at a particular point in your work you can make a 45 degree angle that looks really nice with garter stitch. Miter squares are often used for making afghans.

Skill: Intermediate
Cast On: Multiples of 2 + 1
For this pattern you will need to know the following techniques:
Knit – k
Knit Two Together – k2tog
Slip Stitch – sl st
Pass Slipped Stitch Over – psso

Pattern Instructions:

Row 1: Knit all sts.

Row 2: Knit until one st before where you want to decrease, sl 1, k2tog, psso, knit to end.

Repeat rows 1 – 2 until you have 3 sts left. Then slip 1, k2tog, psso. Cut yarn and weave in ends.

When you finish your pattern should look like this:

Example of a Mitered Square (click for larger)

music in video is from demo 2008 by (Latchxe9 Swing) / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0