Decreasing Stitches

Decreasing reduces the number of stitches on a row. It is used to shape the knitted fabric. They are generally are worked in the odd rows (RS for needle knitters) and slant either right or left. Left slanting decreases are worked on the right of the loom (towards peg 1) and right slanting decreases are worked on the left of the loom (towards the end of the piece). Where you decrease depends on what your end goal is. If you don't want your decrease to show, you should place it on the edge of the knitted fabric but make sure that you slant it correctly. However, if you want to make it easier to pick up or join stitches, you should work the decrease one stitch from the edge.

A series of adjacent decreases is essentially binding off. After all, a simple form of binding off is consecutive K2tog, P2tog, K2tog tbl, or P2tog tbl.

Stitches that are being decreased can hang in different orders. For example, the first stitch could be on top of the second stitch or vice versa, leaning to the left or the right. The order of stitches is important, both for appearance and for the way it pulls the fabric.

For information on how to evenly space decreases, see shaping.