Top Down Raglan Pullover

My first top-down pullover raglan, a crew neck. (Does anybody wear these any more?)



In my previous post I gave a brief description of how a top-down raglan is developed.

The picture above shows the beginning from the point of view of the knitter.

The picture above shows the beginning of the sweater as if you were looking at a sweater.

The yarn was a gift and I had plenty of it--good thing--because two of the three colors didn't match each other even though they are "no dye lot" yarns! Yeah, right. Because of this I had to separate the colors because the two non matching skeins would be quite obvious.

I will definitely make more of top down raglans. Besides being fun to do, there are a lot of new techniques to learn.

Why top downs over the traditional bottom up and seamed sweaters:

--they are seamless

--will know if are running short of yarn and can adjust

--can try it on to check for fit as you go along

--they are fun!

The basis of this brown sweater is The Complete Book of Raglan Sweaters from Leisure Arts, 1997

Top-down raglans 101

When I was writing about my top-down raglan cardigan a lot of non-knitters were confused.

http://gloriastitches.blogspot.com/2011/07/light-rose-sweater-re-do.html

So, to make the process as basic as possible, picture or sketch a cape.

Most likely you began at the top and went downward.

A bottom-up (traditional) seamed sweater has several parts: front, back, sleeves and all are seamed (as well as the shoulders.)

The top-down raglans can be seamless and the entire sweater is made at the same time. The cape is made just like the top-down raglan until the shoulders.

The neckline is begun and stitches are added to increase. On the sketch of the cape I indicate two seams (plus are two seams in the same locations on the back).

When you drew or pictured the cape, your increasing came at the side; on a sweater the increases are at the "seams", one stitch on each side of four "seams". That is how the sweater gets larger. Note that they are not seams in the sense that they are stitched together as in a traditional bottom-up sweater; rather, stitches are there. If you have a raglan-sleeved sweater you can check this.

This process is continued until the underarms when the sweater is divided: front and back are joined and worked as one; plus two sleeves.

Soon I will be posting about my recently completed top-down raglan pullover and will show how a top-down is begun.