General Guidelines for a Basic Sweater

Okay, how in Kali's name can anyone give you directions for a sweater that work for both knitting and crochet?

Well, the answer is that this isn't a pattern, but simply a set of guidelines with which you can get a general idea how to make a basic sweater. Many of the same basic construction guidelines hold for both knitting and crochet, even if the particulars differ. You can build a bookcase using either a hammer and nails, or a screwdriver and some screws. The particulars might differ, but many of the same general principles hold.

The type of sweater I'm going to go over here is called a raglan sweater. There are variations on this, and I'll run over them lightly at the end, but for now, I'll be examining a very basic type of raglan sweater. (Here's a picture of one that I crocheted so you can see what it looks like.)

The advantages to raglan sweaters are numerous, but the major one is that you don't have to worry about your gauge. Normally, when you buy a commercial sweater pattern, you need to make sure you stay in the gauge that the pattern calls for, or else you could end up with a sweater that will fit a seven foot tall penguin or a three foot tall garden rake -- but certain not you or anyone you know. Raglans are made from the neck down, and you can try them on as you go, so you just sort of keep going until you have to stop. Trying on as you go is a lot easier when you're crocheting than knitting, but you can manage with both.

The Basic Raglan Sweater

The construction of a raglan top of any kind runs along the following lines, whether it be knit, crochet, or sewn from fabric:

If you pick apart the long seams running up the sides and under the arms, indicated by the red arrows, the raglan top can be flattened into one piece of fabric with a hole in the middle for your head.

In order to make a basic raglan, you start at the neck, and go around and around, making 90-degree increases at the blue lines. Thus, you make the center square area, called the "yoke" first. This is the part that lies over your shoulders. Then, you start in on the front and back, and the sleeves, in a variety of ways.

Each style of crafting, knitting and crocheting, has its own way of turning a corner, and I list some below:

Gauge and Raglan Sweaters

Gauge is that scary word that torpedoes most efforts to make a sweater, but that actually works for you when you are making a raglan. Gauge is how many stitches and rows per inch you're getting. When you use a commercial pattern, you have to be careful to match the gauge they tell you to get.

But when you're making a raglan, you are just going until it fits, so your gauge is less critical. You do need to know it a bit, though, so you can guess how big the neck opening has to be. Make a gauge patch that is at least five inches by five inches. A little bigger is better. Then, measure how wide it is in inches and stitches. That's your gauge -- the number of stitches per inch. Do the same with the length of the patch and the rows -- there's your rows per inch gauge.

Measure the back of your neck. From this and the above numbers, you can get how wide you want it to be back there in terms of stitches. Give yourself about two inches for the over-the-shoulder measurement. Give yourself half your neck width for the front sides.

Cast on or chain that many stitches. Mark the stitches that hit the corners -- these are the ones that you'll have to do your increases from. Then just knit or crochet away, making your 90-degree increases at the corners, using the above table as a guide.

When you get to the front neck depth, you can either join the front sides together to get a pullover, or not to get a cardigan.

How big do you make it? Just keep laying it over your shoulders, or the shoulders of the intended recipient, until it's the right width and depth -- until the corners join comfortably at your underarms. This is easier to do if you're crocheting, in which case you just take out the hook, tug up a big loop so that it doesn't unravel, and just stick it on yourself and look in a mirror. If you're knitting, you have to slip the stitches to a piece of thin ribbon -- the 1/8" stuff you can get reams of at craft stores is great. Tape a nice long piece securely to one end of a double-pointed needle of the same size as the needle you're using to make the sweater (make very sure that none of the sticky stuff is facing up!), and slip the stitches as if to purl to this needle. Make sure that they don't fall off the end of the ribbon; that'd be a major bummer. Spread the thing out nice and flat, and lay it over your shoulders. After you've tried it on, then slip the stitches back to your working needle and resume.

This may sound like a huge pain, but if you're going to be spending two months to make a sweater, half an hour to make sure it fits isn't too much to ask.

Getting to the Body and the Sleeves

Okay, now you have to separate the body from the sleeves. If you're crocheting, it's a snap -- just skip over the sleeve stitches and join the front and back as you go.

If you're knitting, it's slightly more involved. I presume you've been using a circular needle either 24" long or 32" long to work the yoke so far. Get two 16" needles of the same size. When you hit the sleeve stitches, slip them onto this needle and put two pointcaps on it to keep the stitches from falling off. Keep going with the body stitches, tugging the yarn a bit to make sure you don't leave a gaping hole. When you hit the next sleeve, slip those stitches to the second 16" needle, and then resume with the body again. At this point, whether you're crocheting or knitting, you just keep going around and around (around your chest and back) until it's as long as you want, in any pattern stitch you choose. You could even stop here and not work the sleeves at all, and you'll wind up with a sort of kicky cap-sleeve type of effect that might be cute for a vest.

Note: If you're knitting, it's important to add new balls of yarn and work the sleeves for a few inches before going on to the body, to keep the underarms from stretching out. Use 16" circular needles and work in the round. (You'll probably still have small openings that you have to deal with, whether you knit or crochet. Just firm `em up when you're finished.) If you're crocheting, I strongly recommend you go back and forth and not in rounds. Don't complete a round, chain up, and keep going in the same direction. Stop at the underarm seam, turn the work, and go the other way. You'll end up with an open seam under the arm that you have to sew up, but it works out better, it's easier to keep track of decreases, and the sleeve won't roll under that way.

You'll probably want to taper the sleeves as you go, too. If you crochet, a good formula for sleeves that are made in double crochet is to decrease a stitch on both sides, every other row.

Knitting is more individual. A good guideline for knitting is to count the number of stitches at the top of the sleeve, and then slip the sleeve to a ribbon. Flatten the sleeve out and measure how big around it is in inches. This gives you the number of stitches per inch that you're getting. (Yes, presumably you did this before -- do it again, just to make sure.)

Then measure around your wrist in inches. You can use this number and the number you got above to measure how many stitches that'll be. It'll be smaller than the number at the top of the sleeve -- and the difference is the number of stitches you have to lose as you work out to your wrist.

Then, measure the distance from your underarm to your wrist, along the underside of your arm in inches. Use your row gauge to figure out how many rows that is. (Same as above -- I know you did it before. Do it again.)

Kazam! You now know how many stitches you have to lose over how many rows! Fiddle with the numbers, and you should be able to get something like "4 stitches every 5 rows," or "six stitches every eight rows," or whatever.

In the above diagram, you want to decrease (2x-2y) stitches over z rows.

As the sleeve tapers, you'll want to transfer the stitches from your 16" circ to a set of double-points of the same size. Keep going until the sleeve is the right length -- and make notes of what you're doing if you need to. Sleeves are a pain in that you need to be able to make the same thing twice. You do not want to find yourself in the position of having a one-armed sweater, and sitting there making the second sleeve going, "Uhhhhhh . . . hold on, what did I do before . . . ?" (There are ways to deal with this that involve making both sleeves on the same needle on two balls of yarn so that you do both at once; that's great but a bit esoteric for basic instructions.)

What pattern stitch do you use? Any stitch you want, although you'll want to make a gauge patch beforehand. A gauge count in stockinette, for example, isn't going to be anything like the gauge count in seed stitch or moss stitch. Everyone know that crochet varies from sc to dc or trc, but it seems to surprise most people that knitting can fluctuate wildly as well.

And just stop when it fits. If you're knitting, bind off loosely! Bind-offs tend to be a lot tighter than the flexible, stretchy stuff beneath them. If you bind off normally, you won't be able to get your hand through the sleeve. Bind off sloppily, I'm serious. Or snag a good knitting book (the Vogue one on my books page goes through a good K1-P1 bind-off) that tells you how to bind-off with increased flexibility.

And there you have it! Baby sweaters are a great thing to start with, since they are fast and don't take much yarn. I recommend that you make a little one for an infant before attempting one for an adult. You learn more from doing than you'll ever learn from rereading these directions. If you don't have a kid handy, make a sweater and drop it off at the local Goodwill; someone can definitely use it.

Variations on a Theme

What else can you do to vary these guidelines?

Well, one thing is that you don't have to make those light blue lines on the above diagrams perfect 45-degree angles. The human body is not quite as long as it is wide in that area, and a perfect 45-degree raglan angle winds up with a rather oversized sweater. (I like oversized sweaters, so that's fine by me, but some people want them to fit a bit more closely.) You don't have to do a perfect corner increase in either knitting or crocheting, but you'll have to be a bit more experienced to be able to futz with that. I recommend Righetti's "Knitting in Plain English" and "Sweater Design in Plain English" books for more on this, reviewed and linked on the books page.

You can make a collar or a hood as well, just by crocheting or knitting flat for a bit and making a flap, then doing the raglan increases. To make a hood, sew the top of the flap shut.

You don't have to taper the sleeves and can make them a bit floppier.

Or any number of other things! Have a blast!