One small change at the armhole for a much better fit

Tanisha is a good knitter who knows her body and knows exactly how she likes her garments to fit. She was in the shop the other day and loved the look of Keisha, a simple, two rectangles sweater that I designed as a super basic sweater for my First Sweater Class.

It's a cute sweater, but as with all dropped shoulder tops, it has its issues, as we talked about last week.  I deal with it, but Tanisha, not so much.  I thought she looked wonderful in it, but there's a spot that makes her crazy.

You can see in the photo, the slight fold of fabric above her bustline right before the shoulder starts. If there were more ease in the body, it would be a little sleeve, but it would still fold there. It's what dropped shoulder sweaters do.

And she hates it.  

Last week we looked at what Ginni did with the Liberty 250 — adding stitches at the armhole to build in a defined cap sleeve, separating ease from sleeve length entirely. That’s a solution to one problem, but this is a different problem with a different solution. 

For this problem we're not looking to add more fabric to give us less ease in the body and more in the sleeve.

This problem is about getting rid of fabric where we don't want it. 

And the solution is pretty simple too.  Get rid of the fabric above the bust.

Simple, right?

Yes. It's called the modified drop shoulder.

Make the body any size you want with however much ease you want. When you reach the armhole,  instead of placing a marker and continuing straight up to the shoulder, bind off an inch or so worth of stitches.  Here's what it looks like

That’s it.

There's no sleeve to put in, so no cap adjustment.  Just a small step inward at each side.

What that does is remove the extra fabric.  If you have very little ease in the body, it removes the fabric that would have become that weird little stub at the top of the shoulder. 

Also, and this is where it matters for Tanisha, it removes that extra bit of fabric that folds above the bust. 

If you want a good deal of ease in the body, but not so much sleeve, this is a perfect remedy.  The ease stays exactly where she needs it, across the bust. But the shoulder line steps in, and the fold disappears.

Here’s what makes this modification easy: because there’s no sleeve to fit into the opening, the shaping doesn’t need to be precise. You have latitude. Bind off half an inch and keep it relaxed. Bind off as much as you need to bring the shoulder in as much as you want. 

Nothing else is riding on that decision.

This is actually what makes dropped shoulder construction so forgiving in the first place. The shoulder line can land anywhere you want. There’s no wrong answer built into the construction — which means there’s room to play, room to adjust, room to make it fit your actual body without rewriting the whole pattern.

I talk about exactly how this works in my YouTube video here.

The pattern is not the boss of you.

But here’s where things start to change. 

When you see what one inch at the armhole does — when the shoulder sits clean and the fold is gone and everything is exactly where it should be — you start to want that intention in your knitting. You start to appreciate what a little more precision actually does.

And then you begin to understand the appeal of the set-in sleeve.

In a dropped shoulder sweater, an imprecise shoulder seam reads as relaxed. The construction forgives it. That’s the whole point of two rectangles.

Set in sleeves, even sleeveless ones, are next level.  

We'll talk about that and everyone's favorite summer fiber next week.

Warmly,
Ellen