Why Your Sweater Doesn't Match Your Style -- and What to Do About It

A woman in the shop this spring told me she'd never once worn a sweater she'd knit. Not from lack of trying -- she'd made several. "I knit to relax," she said, "so I like easy things. I don't like purling, so I knit in the round, and I don't know how to finish, so if I work in pieces, I just stress about the seaming." She never told me what she actually liked to wear. The conversation stayed entirely inside the knitting -- what was comfortable to make, not what she wanted to put on her body.

Don't get me wrong -- it is totally fine if you never wear a single thing you make, if making it was the whole point. Potholders, blankets, shawls -- that's a real and legitimate way to love this craft, and I'm not here to talk anyone out of it.

But if you want a handmade wardrobe -- clothes you actually reach for, that fit the life you actually live -- that's a different goal, and it asks something different of you. You can sew drawstring pants all day. But if your life runs on tailored jackets, and you want your closet to reflect that, at some point you have to learn to sew the jacket.

Here's where most people skip a step. They go straight to "what pattern should I knit" without ever answering the question underneath it -- what do I actually wear? Not what's trendy. Not what looked good on someone else. What's already living in your closet that you reach for over and over, the thing you put on without thinking because it just works?

Go look in your closet and pull the three or four tops and sweaters you wear most often. Are they easy fitting dropped shoulder garments, or closer fitting set-in sleeve garments? Are there raglan sweaters? Tops with yokes? If you're not sure what I mean, check out The Construction Comes First, the guide I put together to help you begin to understand the different sweater construction styles and how they fit. The guide won't teach you how to knit the sweaters, but it will give you the language of construction and schematics so you're not guessing at patterns anymore.

And honestly, knowing what you like to wear is step one. Making it fit your actual body is its own skill, a slower one that I teach a lot more of elsewhere.

If you want fast, there are plenty of simple sweaters with no particular fit. But if you're actually interested in closing the gap between what you love to wear and what you love to knit, you have to commit to learning about both. There are skills in sweater knitting that have very little to do with the actual knitting and everything to do with what fits and flatters you.

And I tell you with a heart full of love and encouragement that there is no version of successful sweaters you love to wear where you skip that part.

Warmly,
~Ellen