One of the decisions you have to make when designing a sweater is what kind of a sleeve to have. Figuring out the armholes on the body of the sweater is dependant on the sleeve design. This week, we looked at two options and will cover another two next week.
Drop shoulder - the simplest of the armholes to make because there really is no shaping for it. Basically, your sleeves will start off your shoulder and lay straight along the side of the body of your sweater. If you pick up your favorite sweatshirt and look at it, you'll notice it's probably a drop shoulder design. The sleeves have no shape at the seam with the body and are practically straight.
Raglan - A raglan sleeve armhole is a little more complicated, but probably the next easiest to make. The raglan shape starts at the bottom of the armhole and decreases evenly up to the bottom of the neck. Sometimes, there is an initial decrease at the beginning of the armhole to form a "shelf' for the sleeve to sit on. This is usually done when the sweater is made in pieces and then sewn together. If you make your sweater in the round in one piece, it is usually done with this initial decrease (usually done by casting off x stitches at the beginning of the next 2 rows).
There are advantages and disadvantages to all forms of sleeves/armholes and your choice will ultimately depend on which one best suits your particular need. We will cover two more common armholes next week and then discuss the advantages/disadvantages of all of them.
JAS
Here is the link to create graph paper tomatch your knitting gauge:
ReplyDeletehttp://tata.tatoa.to/knit/matrix/e-index.html
I suggest you bookmark it. Another way to do it is to go to excel and change your column and row width and height tomatch your gauge. The benefit of using Excel is that if you're working with color, you can change them right in the program and then print it out!
Hugzzz 8-)