See the big fat neck opening? I finally finished the body of Jim’s sweater.
He wanted a “Henley” sort of neck opening– it’s his favorite. He also doesn’t like the placket too deep, the depth is about 2 1/2″. (I’ve seen plackets as shallow as 1″ and as deep as 4″ on commercial sweaters, so the depth is really a matter of preference.)
Henley’s are one of the easiest necklines too design. So, as you can see, I knit the front up to the point where I wanted the neck split to start. I wanted the placket to be about 1 1/2″, so I left 7 stitches on a holder. At that point, I also put the stitches for the left side on a string and worked the right side only. Doing a few calculations, which require anticipating when sweater will actually need to finish up, the other involved figuring out how many stitches I needed for the full neck width– this happened to be 35 stitches. I figured out the row to start shaping the rest of the neck (this will be discussed in detail later).
I then decreased at a rate as follows.
Place a marker 14 stitches from neck edge (this is one half of 35 stitches- 7 stitches.) Starting at neck edge:
- Row 1: Bind off 3 stitches, work in pattern to end of row.
- Row 2 & all even rows: work all stitches in pattern.
- Row 3: Bind off 2 stitches, work in pattern to end of row.
- Row 5: Bind off 2 stitches, work in pattern to end of row.
- Row 7: Bind off 1 stitch, work in pattern to end of row.
Repeat row 1 until you have bound off all 14 neck stitches.
Then, I worked the left side to match the right side.
I worked the back to match– only without the slit and no neck shaping. (Neck shaping is permitted on the back neck, but honestly, I often skip it.) I sewed the shoulders together using mattress stitch.
Are there any tips for shaping a neck?
For a well fitted neck, you will be nearly finished with the front side when you have completed the neck shaping. Unless your gauge is very fine, there should be no more than 4 rows before the final bind-off. (If you have more rows to knit, it’s likely the designer made the neck a bit deep either a) to simplify pattern writing, b) to cope with the fact that knitters frequently don’t hit the row gauge or c) the sweater style calls for a deep neckline.)
Note, also, as you work this neck shaping, if you are using a pattern that results in a sweater that fits both your neck and shoulders well, you will almost certainly begin to shape the shoulders before you have bound off all 14 neck stitches. To do this, you will decrease stitches at the beginning of even rows– generally, you’ll bind off roughly 5 stitches every other row. (Beginner pattern sometimes skip shoulder shaping and have you bind everything off all shoulder stitches at once. )
Obviously, you need to finish the neck shaping before you finish the shoulder shaping–but remember: you don’t want it to end way too soon. Understanding that you want to finish the neck and shoulder shaping at on almost the same row is key to understanding how to calculate a neck. For this reason, I’m defering discussing the calculation for a bit– and I’ll be creating charts and the bit of the sweater calculator that lets you calculate the neck shortly.
Bye for now!
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