Chapter 15

How to Knit a Sweater, Step by Step

In This Chapter

Getting your supplies together

Determining size and checking gauge

Casting on and knitting the parts of the sweater

Keeping track of your progress with a diagram

Being able to knit and purl, manipulate stitches (increasing, decreasing, and so on), and create such special effects as cables and stripes is fun in and of itself, no matter what you create. You can happily knit for years using these techniques to make hats, scarves, afghans, bags, and other pieces that require just a little simple shaping or assembly. At some point, though, you may want to try your hand at something more challenging: knitting sweaters.

Before you cast on your first stitch, take a little time for few simple preparatory steps: deciding on the perfect size, determining your gauge, and drawing a quick diagram of your sweater pieces. Of course, you can forget these steps and jump right in, just as you can toss your map in the backseat and drive from Maine to California by following the sun. But your trip is likely to go more smoothly (and your sweater likely to turn out as you imagined) if, before leaving, you check your oil and tires, study your map, and highlight the route to follow. This approach may be less spontaneous, but once you’re on the road, you won’t hit any dead ends that halt your progress.

This chapter runs you through the sweater-making process, from the getting-ready-to-knit info to the how-to-make-the-back-front-and-sleeves info. After you complete your back, front, and sleeves, you’re ready to finish your sweater. Turn to Chapters 16 and 17 for information about those tasks.

Gathering Your Materials

To knit your first sweater, you need three things: a good pattern, good yarn, and needles. If possible, look for your materials in a knitting shop rather than a big-box or craft store. People who work in a yarn shop are generally very knowledgeable and can steer you to good pattern choices and quality yarn. If you run into any problems with the pattern or find that something confuses you, they’ll most likely be delighted to help you figure it out.

The following sections offer some tips to give you a good start in gathering your materials.

Picking a pattern

For your first sweater, choose a simple style with minimal shaping. A dropped-shoulder pullover is a good choice, or try the Easy Top-Down Raglan sweater pattern in Chapter 18, which is knit in the round. Save a cardigan with buttonholes for your next project.

Also look for a pattern that calls for size US 7, 8, or 9 needles (that’s 41⁄2 mm, 5 mm, and 51⁄2 mm, respectively). On needles this size, your project will knit up relatively quickly. You’ll also be able to see, count, and manipulate individual stitches without straining your eyes — or patience. Plus, if a pattern calls for US 7, 8, or 9 needles, the yarn will be medium weight, one of the easier weights to work with. (Refer to Chapter 2 for details about different yarn weights.)

A child’s sweater that knits up quickly is a good practice sweater. You get to work through all the steps of sweater making in miniature — and little kids look great in anything, whether the sleeves are an exact match or not. Plus, if you make it too big, the child will grow into it; if you make it too small, you’ve got yourself a ready-made gift or a doll’s outfit.

Make a photocopy of your pattern so that you can write on it freely as you knit. Keep the copy in a protective plastic sleeve to carry around with your knitting. The same goes for any charts that come with the pattern.

Chapter 14 guides you through the parts of a typical sweater pattern. We recommend that you review it before starting a sweater project.

Yarn

Choosing materials for your first sweater may be daunting if your local knitting store is a yarn and color wonderland. This section gives you some suggestions to help you narrow down the choices.

Wool is the best choice for a first sweater because it knits up easily, blocks beautifully, and looks great. Choose a color on the lighter side so that it’s easy to see individual stitches, and make sure that the yarn is a pretty color you’ll enjoy knitting. When selecting a yarn, look for a superwash wool. With superwash, you can launder the sweater in the washing machine and tumble dry, while regular wool has a tendency to felt.

If you’re averse to wool for some reason, look into a blend of other natural fibers before turning to synthetics. Avoid all-cotton yarn for your first sweater unless you’ve worked up a lot of the smaller projects in this book and feel that you’ve had plenty of practice making stitches. Cotton yarn doesn’t have much give and can be frustrating to work if your hands are new to needles and yarn.

If you must use a 100-percent synthetic yarn, choose a good-quality one (check with the salesperson at your local yarn shop for a recommendation) and resolve to be very careful in the blocking process. (You may want to take a quick look through Chapter 2 before you head to the yarn shop to choose materials for your first sweater.)

Needles

If you’re using straight needles, they should be at least 12 to 14 inches long. If you have trouble with stitches slipping off your needles, choose wooden or plastic needles for your first sweater.

Before you leave the store, double-check the materials list in the pattern to see whether you need to have any other supplies at the ready, such as stitch holders, markers, a pompom maker, or a tapestry needle for sewing up seams or adding buttons.

Other supplies to have handy

Keep the following supplies together in a zippered bag with your knitting projects, and you won’t have to get up and hunt around for them when you’d rather be knitting. See Chapter 2 for more information about some of these tools.

Calculator

Crochet hook

Pencil and paper

Ring stitch markers

Safety pins

Scissors

Scrap yarn (preferably smooth, white cotton)

Spare double-pointed needle

Tape measure and a small ruler

Tapestry needle

It also doesn’t hurt to include an emery board for a renegade nail that keeps snagging on your yarn.

Before You Cast On

Before you put yarn to needles, you have a few small tasks to accomplish: determine the best size sweater to make, check your gauge thoroughly, and if you want to be really thorough, make a diagram — as shown in the sidebar, “Finding the perfect size,” later in this chapter.

Step 1: Pick a size, any size

Sit down with your materials and take your pattern in hand. Go past the section that says “Sizes” and look for “Knitted Measurements.” Don’t be tempted to choose a size arbitrarily; one designer’s medium is another designer’s small. Instead, choose the size in the pattern that most closely matches the size you want your garment to measure. Choose according to the bust or chest measurement, or measure a sweater you love that fits you well and then find the closest match. If you’re not sure how many inches around your sweater should be, check the sidebar, “Finding the perfect size,” for help determining your perfect size for a given style.

Most patterns are written for more than one size. Generally, instructions for the smallest size are listed first, followed by those for the larger sizes. So a pattern that includes instructions for small, medium, large, and extra large sizes would present info in this form: S (M, L, XL). If the instructions say, “Cast on 100 (112, 120, 128) stitches,” you cast on 100 stitches for a size small, 112 stitches for a size medium, 120 for a size large, and 128 for a size extra-large. Similarly, if the instructions say, “Repeat last 2 rows 8 (9, 11, 12) times” you know to knit these last 2 rows 8 times for a small sweater, 9 times for a medium sweater, and so on. Note: Many patterns give a size measurement in addition to an actual measurement: for example, “chest 32 (34 36), actual size 36 (38 40).”

When you’ve determined which set of measurements to follow, get out a yellow highlighter or a pencil and carefully mark every number that refers to your size. If you’ve made a copy of your pattern as we recommend earlier, you won’t have to mark on the original.

Finding the perfect size

If you’re wondering whether 21 inches across the chest would fit better than 23 inches, there’s an easy way to find out. There’s a good chance that you’ve never measured your favorite sweater. Did you know that it measures 24 inches in width (48 inches in circumference) and 26 inches in length? Probably not. But now’s the time to unfold it from the shelf (or dig it out of the pile on the chair), find your tape measure, and see what measurements feel good to you.

Obviously, if your most comfortable sweater is oversized and baggy and the sweater you’re planning to knit is short and fitted, you shouldn’t use your favorite sweater as a starting point. Look through your closet for something that fits the way you envision your future sweater will fit, measure it, and compare the measurements to those given in the pattern. Or pocket your tape measure along with your knitting notebook and a pen and head to your favorite sweater store. Fill your fitting room with sweaters, try them on, measure the ones that fit well, note the numbers in your knitting notebook, neatly refold the sweaters, and return them with a gracious smile to the salesperson. You’ll know what sizes fit you best based on accurate measurements and styles.

What if you’re knitting for someone else and you don’t have that person’s favorite sweater on hand to measure? Unless you’re making a present for this person, call and ask. If it’s a gift and the person is of average height and build, you’re probably safe knitting a medium. Or if it’s for your favorite guy, you can’t go wrong with a large (or extra-large if he’s tall).

One wonderful thing about knitted fabric is that it’s forgiving. It stretches. In desperation, you can even block it out or block it in — to a point. (See Chapter 16 for information about blocking.) Width is really the only measurement you need to be concerned with when you start your sweater. Length can be adjusted fairly easily once you’re underway. It’s worth a little (or a lot of) investigation time upfront to ensure that, at the long-awaited moment when the sweater pieces have been knit and blocked and sewn together, you have a masterpiece that fits.

Step 2: Find your gauge

Go to the section in your pattern that gives the required — that’s required — gauge for the pattern. How is the gauge in your pattern measured? What size needles do you use, and what pattern stitch do you work? To brush up on the process of measuring gauge, refer to Chapter 3.

Always work your gauge swatch on the exact same needles and with the very same yarn you’ll use for your project, not just needles of the same size and/or the same yarn in a different color. Facsimiles can be misleading. Needles of the same size but made out of different material, such as wood or Teflon-coated steel, can make a difference in the size of the stitch you make.

To find your gauge, follow these steps:

1. Work a swatch to a length and width of 5 inches or more, and then thread a piece of scrap yarn through the stitches on the needle.

2. Block your swatch, ideally in the same manner you’ll block your sweater (see Chapter 16 for blocking instructions) and let it rest.

3. After the swatch has rested, measure it to determine your gauge.

4. Re-knit the swatch as necessary to get the exact gauge you need.

• If you have more stitches per inch than the pattern calls for, go up one needle size.

• If you have fewer stitches per inch than the pattern calls for, go down one needle size.

Tinker with your needle size until you come as close as you can to the stitch gauge required by the pattern. Stitch gauge determines how wide a sweater is, so if you’re off on stitch gauge, your sweater will be off widthwise. After you cast on and start knitting the actual sweater, you can’t do much to make your sweater wider or narrower.

Row gauge will affect your sleeve shaping and raglan shaping, and the placement of a cable or other distinctive vertical pattern may be interrupted in an awkward place if your row gauge is off. But there are ways to work around a not-so-perfect row gauge with a little diagramming and planning (head to the later section, “Graphing sleeves [it’s worth it]”).

Knitting . . . at Last!

After you’ve read through the instructions and established your gauge, it’s time to cast on and launch your sweater. Most sweater patterns proceed in a predictable way, usually beginning with the back, then the front, and then the sleeves.

If you’re knitting in the round, you’ll proceed a bit differently, depending on the type of sweater:

Top-down sweaters: When you knit a top-down sweater, you begin at the neck and knit your way down to just under the arms, knitting the tops of the sleeves as you go. (It may sound confusing, but these are some of the easiest and fastest sweaters to knit; you can find instructions for just such a sweater, the Easy Top-Down Raglan, in Chapter 18.) After you finish the body, you return to the sleeves and finish them separately.

Bottom-up sweaters: For these you knit the bottom portion of the sweater first, all the way to the underarms. Then you join the sleeves, which have been knit separately, and decrease the sweater yoke all the way to the neck opening.

Knitting the back

Most sweater patterns instruct you to begin with the back. They tell you which needles to use to get started, how many stitches to cast on, and what stitches to begin with. This section offers helpful advice on getting off to a good start.

Get into the habit of keeping track of how many rows you’ve knit as you work the sweater back (and front). Why? Because if the back and front match row for row, you can sew them together using the mattress stitch (explained in Chapter 16). Using safety pins, pin the first stitch from which you want to count. Then, as you knit, stop every once in a while, count 20 rows, and pin the next stitch. If you pin a stitch every 20 rows, it’s easy to keep track of the row number, and you won’t have to count from the very beginning each time.

Casting on

For the two-strand cast-on method (refer to Chapter 4), you have to know how much yarn to allow for the number of stitches you’ll be casting on. Allow 1 to 11⁄2 inches for each stitch to be cast on.

Leave enough of a tail to use later to seam up the side of the sweater. For this, add an extra 12 inches to the amount you need for the cast-on stitches. If this extra-long end gets in your way as you knit, make a butterfly with it. Chapter 2 tells you how to make a butterfly.

Strengthening the cast-on edge

Cast-on edges take a lot of wear, and a well-worn and loved sweater can begin to fray or even break along the bottom edge. You can discourage this wear by casting on with a double strand of yarn (simply cast on with two balls of yarn) and then continuing with a single strand. After the cast-on row, simply drop the second strand and cut it off, leaving an end long enough to weave in later.

Selecting the right side

After you’ve worked a few rows, take a look at the cast-on edge. You’ll see that it looks different from each side: One side shows small neat bumps, and the other shows overlapping diagonal stitches. It’s up to you to decide which side you prefer for the right side of your sweater. If you use the two-strand cast-on method and make the first row a right-side row, the little bumps will show on the right side. If you’d rather use the other side of the cast-on row as the right side, make the first row of your knitting a wrong-side row.

When you move on to the front and the sleeves, be sure to use the same side as the right side. Otherwise the edges of your piece won’t be the same.

Switching needles when it’s time

Many sweaters use smaller needles for cuffs, hems, and necks, and larger needles for the body. The instructions tell you when to change to the larger or smaller needles. At the change row, simply knit the next row with one of the smaller (or larger needles). Here’s an example from a pattern:

With smaller needles and the MC, cast on 101 (107, 117, 125) sts.

Work k1, p1 rib for 31⁄2 inches.

Change to larger needles and work in St st until piece measures 121⁄2 (13, 13, 131⁄2) inches from beg.

In this example, to switch needles you work to the end of the change row and knit the next row using one of the larger needles. Essentially, you’re knitting from the smaller needle to the larger one. At the end of this row, the stitches are now on the larger needle, and the smaller needle is empty. Put aside the smaller needles and continue on in the stitch pattern(s) given in your pattern with the larger needles.

Measuring your piece

As accurate as your gauge swatch may be, knitting a piece so much larger than a swatch can throw off your careful measurements. For peace of mind, take a gauge reading after you work a good 4 inches or so. Work to the halfway point in your row so that you can spread out the stitches along both needles to the width of the fabric. Lay out your piece on a flat surface and measure it. If it’s supposed to measure 22 inches across, check to see that it does.

When it’s time to measure the length of your piece, work to the center of the row, lay the piece flat, and measure it from the very bottom — the first row — to the knitting needle. Take your measurement somewhere in the middle, not on the edge; your edges will be more stretched and wobbly and not as stable as the center knitting.

Shaping an armhole

If your sweater has a shaped armhole, the instructions tell you when to begin the armhole shaping, where and how to decrease, and how many stitches you should have left after you’ve completed the shaping. It may say something like this, for example:

Armhole shaping

Bind off 3 sts at beg of next 2 rows. Dec 1 st each side every other row 1 (3, 5) times — 56 (60, 62) sts. Work even until armhole measures 5 (51⁄2, 6) inches.

Before starting any decreasing, put a safety pin into one of the stitches on the LH needle to mark the beginning of the armhole. You’ll measure from that mark when you’re determining the depth of the armhole.

Continue to work the back until you’ve worked the number of inches to the shoulder given in your pattern.

Shaping the shoulder and neck

If the shoulder is shaped, you work the shoulder and neck shaping right after you work the armhole shaping. You’re likely to see instructions like this:

Shoulder and neck shaping

Bind off 6 sts at beg of next 4 (2, 2) rows, 7 sts at beg of next 2 (4, 4) rows. Bind off rem 18 (20, 22) sts for back neck.

Some patterns with straight shoulders tell you to bind off all the stitches on the last row of the back piece and don’t distinguish shoulder stitches from back-neck stitches. If the instructions don’t give specific numbers for shoulder stitches, look at the final line in the instructions for the front. There you should be able to find the number of stitches remaining for each shoulder after you’ve worked the neckline shaping.

Sometimes the shoulder and neck shaping are separated, with the shoulder shaping coming first and the neck shaping later. Simply follow the instructions as they’re given, and you’ll be fine.

At this point, you’ve completed your sweater back. You’re a quarter of the way to a finished sweater, and you have a useful tool — a very accurate gauge swatch. Block the back (see Chapter 16) and have it at the ready in case you need to measure the gauge one more time.

Sloping the shoulders

If your pattern is designed with a straight shoulder and you want it to angle up slightly from shoulder edge to neck, changing your pattern is easy. Instead of binding off all the shoulder stitches at once, bind off several groups of stitches over several rows in stair-step fashion.

For an average gauge of 4 to 6 stitches an inch, three steps make a good slope. Divide the number of stitches for one shoulder by three to determine how many stitches to bind off for each shoulder step. If the number of stitches in the shoulder isn’t evenly divisible by three, make the first two steps the same number of stitches and the third step at the neckline the odd one.

On a piece of graph paper, mark off enough squares in a horizontal line to represent the right shoulder and fill in the steps. (If you have enough room on your graph paper, map out enough squares to represent the back neck and both shoulders, too.) See the accompanying figure.



When you reach the shoulder and are ready to bind off, with the right side facing, bind off the number of stitches for the first “step” at the beginning of the next 2 rows. Then bind off the number of stitches for the second step at the beginning of the next 2 rows. Then bind off the remaining shoulder stitches at the beginning of the next 2 rows. Finally, bind off the back neck stitches.

Knitting the front

The front of a sweater is generally worked in the same way as the back as far as the neckline. Your pattern tells you to work the front until it measures a certain length and to “end with a WS (wrong-side) row.” You begin the neckline on the next (right-side) row.

Shaping the front neck

To shape a neckline, you begin by binding off a group of stitches at the center of your sweater piece. Your pattern tells you “join a second ball of yarn” before you begin to bind the stitches off. You need two balls of yarn to work the remainder of the neckline, one for each side.

To join the second ball of yarn, simply start knitting and binding off with the strand from the second ball. When you return to shape the left side of your neckline, pick up and use the yarn from the first ball.

Shaping the shoulders

Often the shoulder shaping begins while the neckline is still being worked (your pattern says “at the same time” if this is the case). At this point, get out the graph paper again. It’s helpful to chart the neckline shaping stitch by stitch, especially if the shoulders are shaped as well, because the chart makes clear what you should be doing and when.

Here’s a set of example instructions for front neck and shoulder shaping:

Next row (RS): Work 27 sts, join second ball of yarn and bind off center 15 sts, work to end. Working both sides at once, bind off from each neck edge 3 sts once, 2 sts twice, then dec 1 st every other row twice. AT SAME TIME when piece measures same length as back to shoulder, shape shoulder as for back.

Because the back shoulder shaping instructions were “Bind off 9 sts at beg of next 6 rows,” you do the same for the front shoulder shaping. Figure 15-1 shows this pattern charted.

Note: When you begin shoulder shaping while still working the neckline, you shape the right and left sides of your piece on different rows. Your shaping is symmetrical but off by one row. You can see this by checking the bind-offs at either side of the center front neck edge.

Figure 15-1: Charting shoulder and neck shaping for easy reference.

Putting the front and back together

If you take the time to count rows as you knit up the back (which we recommend in the earlier section, “Knitting the back”) and you make the front the exact same number of rows, you can use the nearly invisible and fun-to-do mattress stitch to seam them together. If, on the other hand, you rely on measuring your pieces to check their sameness, you don’t necessarily have the exact same number of rows in both front and back pieces, and you have to seam up your sweater by using the less-than-wonderful backstitch. Head to Chapter 16 for a variety of ways to assemble sweater pieces.

Knitting sleeves

When you’ve worked your way to the sleeves, you’re almost home free. Sleeves are smaller than body parts and therefore go quickly. And shaping makes them interesting to do.

In general, sleeves begin at the cuff, are worked in the same stitch patterns as the back and front, and are shaped by regular increases along the sides. Your pattern tells you how many stitches to cast on, what stitch to work, when to change needles to a larger size if required, when to begin increasing, and how often to increase. In general, patterns instruct you to increase at regular row intervals, although sometimes they tell you to increase at intervals measured in inches.

Advice for making sleeves easy

Here are some tips for knitting sleeves:

If you work the increases 2 stitches in from the edges, seaming your sleeve is a breeze because you have a straight line of undistorted stitches to work with. To do so without throwing off your pattern, add 2 selvedge stitches (border stitches that add stability) on both sides of the piece. Then knit these 2 stitches at the beginning and end of the rows, working the increases and pattern stitches between them.

Using two balls of yarn and one (circular) needle, cast on for two sleeves and work them both at the same time. Doing so ensures that you end up with identical pieces. Just cast on the number of stitches required for one sleeve. Then use the second ball of yarn as you cast on the same number of stitches on the same needle. Work each sleeve with its own ball of yarn.

If you’re working a sweater with a dropped shoulder, you can pick up stitches along the armhole edge of the body and knit from the armhole down to the cuff, saving yourself from having to sew the sleeve to the body. (Find out about picking up stitches in Chapter 17.) Check to see how many stitches your sleeve is supposed to have when you’ve worked all the increases. This is the number to pick up. Work a good inch before you begin decreasing.

Graphing sleeves (it’s worth it)

Once in a while, you may run into a glitch in sleeve-making if the pattern tells you to increase every so many rows and your row gauge is different from the designer’s. Your sleeve may measure the correct length before you’ve worked all the necessary increases, but you end up with a sleeve that’s the right length but the wrong width at the armhole.

If you’re working an angled or shaped-sleeve cap, the top of your sleeve needs to fit exactly into the carved-out shape in the sweater body. To ensure that your sleeve is the correct length and width when you reach the armhole, graph it. (You can buy large sheets of graph paper at an artist’s supply store or simply tape two pieces together lengthwise.) If you’re working a cable or lace pattern that requires a certain number of stitches, graphing your sleeve offers the further advantage of helping you see when you’ve increased enough stitches to begin working the pattern over them.

To graph a sleeve, follow these steps:

1. Draw a line at the bottom of your graph paper to represent the first row after the bottom rib or border of the cuff; mark the center.

2. Go to the sweater back you’ve finished and blocked, and take a new and improved gauge reading.

Subtract the cuff measurement from the length your sleeve should measure to the armhole. Multiply the row gauge per inch by the length your sleeve should measure from the end of the rib or border to the underarm.

3. Count this number of rows from your bottom line and mark the top row to represent the underarm.

4. At the underarm mark, count out a horizontal line of squares to represent the width your sleeve should be at this point.

Make sure that the centers of top and bottom rows are aligned.

5. Mark a row about 1 inch below the underarm; then check your pattern for the first increase row, and mark it.

The rows of squares between the marked rows represent the number of rows you have in which to make your increases.

6. Draw in the rest of the increases.

If you get them all in before reaching the top line, you’re all set. If not, reconfigure the increases so that they’re closer together, and you can be sure of ending up with the correct number of stitches when your sleeve measures the right length.

Figure 15-2 shows a chart of a sleeve with increases.

Figure 15-2: Charting a sleeve with increases (looking at the right half of the sleeve).

The Big Picture: Keeping Track of Where You Are

You don’t knit a sweater in one sitting. No matter how much you love to knit, eventually you have to put it down. For this reason, I highly recommend that you develop a system to remind yourself of where you are at the moment you put down your knitting and where you’re going when you pick it up again later.

Our favorite method for tracking a sweater in progress involves making a diagram of whatever we’re working on. We’re indebted to Gertrude Taylor’s America’s Knitting Book (Simon Schuster Trade) for the idea for this system. What follows is our version of her system.

A diagram is a quick outline drawing you make of your sweater piece. On it, you can show all the knitting information embedded in the text of your pattern. If your sweater pattern is a map of your entire sweater, the diagram you make is a map of the piece you’re working on at the moment. It gives you an instant visual picture of where you are, where you’re headed, and the steps you have to take to get there. Figure 15-3 shows a diagram of a sweater back.

Figure 15-3: A diagram of a sweater back.

We usually work from a general diagram on plain white paper; then we move to graph paper when we get to the shaping area so we can chart out every stitch. Because most sweater patterns have you begin with the back, draw a diagram for that piece first and enter the information that will remind you of the steps en route to the finished piece, such as the following:

How many stitches to cast on

How many inches to work in the border stitch

Where to begin binding off the armhole

How many stitches to bind off

How many stitches to decrease

As you work through the sweater, you can mark off your route as you go (doing so is helpful if you put your work down for a few days) and make notes on things you want to remember. If we’re working on a sweater with armhole shaping, for example, we note on the diagram the number of rows we’ve worked to the first shaping row. This way, when we’re working on the front, we know exactly how many rows to work for the piece to be the same as the back.

As we work through shaping, we can mark off our progress by checking off the decreases as we make them. When we reach the shoulder, we count the rows between the beginning of the armhole shaping and the shoulder and note it on the diagram, and then we finish any shoulder and neck shaping the pattern calls for. Then we have a map that we can use to make the front, up to the point of the neckline. Using the diagram, we can work the front as we did the back, following our notes.

If you’d rather keep track of where you are in a pattern in an easier way, look for removable highlighting tape available at teacher’s supply stores. It looks like regular clear tape but can be peeled off the page when you’re done with it. It’s also a good way to keep track of a particular set of directions you’re knitting again and again, such as a stitch pattern.