The Knitting Fiend

I have made a couple of skirts with side seam shaping and encountered unsolvable problems, because the skirts started to have longer peaks hanging down on the side seams that could not easily be fixed with anything but ripping.

Since then I have not made a skirt following that or a similar pattern.

Any tricks you know?

The problem Angelika is describing is fairly common, and is noticeable when a person knits a long, flared skirts. I snapped a picture of a page from "mon tricot special: knit and crochet."¹ Notice the knitter is perplexed because the sides forms droopy downward facing points? Ick!

Why does this happen? One common theory you will find posted on web pages is the side seams stretch. The other is that the sides seams are too long in the first place. The best solution to the problem comes from understanding that both stretching and being too long in the first place contribute to the problem.

Let's start by examining a flat pattern of flared skirt designed by someone who insists it's important to "keep it simple" and not make things "too complicated." A typical design is shown to the left and outlined in black. Notice the skirt is a trapezoid; the top width should be a bit wider than than the wearer's actual waist. How much wider is a matter of preference; if it's too small to get over the hips, a zipper will be required. Also, if you make the waist very tailored, you should add interior darts for a good fit. If you do not use a zipper, the skirt must be wide enough to pass over the wearers hips; for a flared skirt, the lower portion continues to widen.

In a "keep it simple stupid" (K.I.S.S.) design, the hem forms a straight line.

Ok, so why might the edges droop on a skirt knit following the K.I.S.S. design rules? Let's look at the geometry.

I illustrated the length of the skirt along the center front with a green line, and the length along the side in black. Notice the length along the side greater than the length down the front. When the skirt flares a lot, the side length can be much greater than the center length. While the hem looks horizontal on paper, when worn, the skirt will drape down from the wearer's hips, and the length at the sides will be longer than the length down the center.

Ok, but sometimes the "keep it simple stupid" ( K.I.S.S. ) method works and there are no droopy point. Why?

Let's consider a straight skirt shaped above the hips, but unshaped below the hips. I illustrated that in red. It's pretty easy to see that the red line illustrating the length of the new side seam is longer than the green line; this is due to the shaping above the hips. However, that's ok.

Why is it ok? Well, if you were to put an elastic band around waist, and a second around your hips, and measured from the waist down to the hips, you'd find the distance measured along the hip is greater than the distance measured along the waist. (Well, you'd find this if you have a sufficiently trim figure to make your hips poke out more than your tummy.) And, quite often the difference in the body lengths is pretty close the different distances on the trapezoid. So, it works out ok-- or at least it's good enough for knitting.

Ok, so maybe you just rushed to the closet and measured these two distances. And maybe you thought: "Hmm.. I have a J. Lo butt; maybe I need the back to be longer than the front." If you were a dress maker working with woven fabrics, you'd do that. When pattern drafting for woven fabrics, you want to make sure the skirt length is "just right" along the front, back and sides, and you do a bunch of other complicated geometric things to make sure the grain hangs correctly etc.

We don't need to go that far with knitting because knit fabric stretches. When knitting a straight skirt, the K. I. S. S. ("keep it simple stupid" ) design shown in red works just fine for most figure types. Droopy sides usually only arise when the skirt is flared and fairly long.

What's the solution? See the purple diagonal lines on the bottom of the skirt? When you knit a flared skirt, you want to work short rows to lengthen the center while keeping the sides a bit short.

Now, I know you are all thinking: "Hey, I bet Lucia's going to write a calculator telling us how to chart this all in advance. I can just cast on knit the short rows, then work up toward the waist, and it will all work out."

No! I could do that, but it's not the best solution. Do you remembered the other theory for side droop I mentioned? The sides seams stretch more than the center? Well, they might. Or, the front might stretch more than the sides. Fabric does stretch under the weight of gravity. All fabric. And knit fabric stretches more than woven fabric. Heavy fabric usually stretches more than light fabric. Loosely knit or woven fabric stretches more than tightly knit or woven fabric.

So, we have no idea exactly how much the fabric will stretch under gravity until after we create it.

Luckily, that's not a problem. In fact, recognizing this makes the solution to the "problem" easier. Here's what you should do when charting. ( I will assume you knit this in two pieces, although it's even easier if you knit circular.): (Click "more" if it appears. ) (more...)

In principle, designing a any type of fitted sleeve cap to fit into an armhole opening is simple. In practice, designing fitted caps to fit in the armhole involve pesky calculations. Clearly, this is the job for another knitting calculator!

Today, I'm going to describe how to calculate a simplified set in sleeve cap and also provide the calculator. Before going further, I want to briefly describe the principle. It's pretty easy.

Examine the schematic to the left. At the top, the schematic shows the right hand side of sweater front joined together at the shoulder and turned on their side. Below, a sleeve is placed near the armhole. One half of the sleeve cap is outlined in red as is the armhole opening on the front piece.

The general principle for cap design, which applies to sleeve cap/armhole variations is this:

These two curved red lines should be approximately the same length.

That's it. That's the principle. The idea underlying the principle is this: You need to sew that sleeve into the hole, and you don't want it to pucker. So, the length of the two seams need to match.

While this is the general principle, I must admit two things. First, some violations are permitted to achieve style variations. For example, if you actually want a puff sleeves, you do make the length of the red curved line on the sleeve cap longer. Second, some designers like to make the length of the red line on a very fitted caps up to 10% longer than the armhole. The extra length permits the cap to be eased into the hole and can be useful if the cap is curved. When sewing with woven garments, the extra length becomes essential and some precision is required to determine the best correct length to permit easing without resulting in gathering. However, knit fabric stretches and forgives a certain degree of mismatch; the knitter does not need to fret they are 2% off on their calculation.

Now, I'll proceed to illustrate this principle on a simplified cap that looks fairly fitted, but which results in simple knitting directions. The knitted cap will look like the one in the schematic. True fitted sleeve caps have a bell shaped cap; this simplified one will use "straight line" shaping. When knit from the bottom up, this type of cap is shaped by binding off a few stitches under the arm; I've illustrated these in violet. Afterwards, stitches are eliminated at a rate of one stitch every two rows. Finally, all remaining stitches are bound off, resulting in a wide flat region at the top of the sleeve.

I want to pause to provide and answer to this question: Why decrease one stitch every two rows? This is an arbitrary choice. In fact, this is "the "simplification compared to a fully fitted fitted sleeve which would have a bell shaped cap.

Now, examine the sweater body and its armhole opening. At chest level, a front or back has enough stitches to create the desired body width at the bottom of the armhole. At shoulder level, the front and back have enough stitches to create the desired shoulder width . The precise method of shaping to vary the sweater width depends on the style chosen by the designer. I'll describe the shaping as knit from the bottom to the top.

If knit from the bottom, the armhole is shaped by first binding off a few stitches under the arm. As a general rule, the number of stitches bound off should match the number bound off for the sleeve. This makes it easy to sew those two flat parts together. Afterwards, stitches are bound off at a rate of 1 stitch every 2 rows until the shoulder width is achieved. Notice this is the same rate of binding off as on the cap. Choosing the same bind off rate for both pieces isn't necessary, but it makes it easy to match rows on the garment and sleeves in this area, and simplifies seaming. I then knit without shaping until the armhole depth is achieved. Afterwards I shape the shoulders, but this detail is not shown in the figure.

Now, for the knitty gritty: creating knitting directions that result in the correct sleeve cap. Almost anyone can figure out the directions to shape the armhole based on the verbal description above. However, to design this cap we need to figure out

• How many stitches are in the biceps.
• How many stitches do we bind off at the underarm.
• How times do we decrease at a rate or 1 stitch every two rows and
• How many stitches will remain at the top of the cap.

However, to figure the answers to the last three bullets, we must first design the armhole. So, I'll explain by way of example. The example will be in the form of a calculator, so if you want, you can change the number to match your sweater design.