Let's talk raglan

[Lisa R.]

I've made a couple of raglan type sweaters and really prefer the top down, no seaming approach to sweaters.

I have two questions, both probably stupid, but there it is.

First, is raglan the only style for seamless sweaters? Can you do top-down with a different type of sleeve?

Second, are there a variety of types of increases/decreases that work for the raglan style? The patterns I've used both have yarnovers that leave an "open" or "eyelet" type of pattern feature, and I'd like to eliminate that from my sweaters. Would a KFB or other increase accomplish the same thing and look nice without the open look?

If you wanted to just point me to a good resource for sweaters, I can research a bit myself. I just thought I'd come here since you are all so knowledgeable!

Thanks for your help.

[suzeeq]

You can do a top down circular yoke, there's a pattern generator for one at The Knitting Fiend.

There's an new method for top down set in sleeves called contiguous. It's a bit like doing a raglan, but instead of starting with 4 inc points, you have only 2 which are the shoulder 'seams', and the incs are done on both the RS and WS. When you get to the top of the shoulder, the incs change to a Y shape to make the sleeve cap and incs are done on the sleeve sts only. You can read more about it on the Contiguous group at ravelry. It takes doing a sampler of it (there's a KAL for that) to understand how it works, but it's quite ingenious.

[Antares]

Here's a top-down raglan (well, I think it's a raglan since I always forget what raglan means) that uses kfb and kbf rather than YOs. It's short-sleeved, but you can easily lengthen the sleeves, as many have done: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/arleen

I like it because you start out working in rows (for the button section across the shoulder) and then you switch to knitting in the round.

I'm sure there are others, but this is one easy design that I've made which doesn't use YOs.

[salmonmac]

I like this very nearly invisible increase which is also demonstrated in the video on the Increases page along with its sister increase.
http://www.knittinghelp.com/video/pl...t-loop-english

[suzeeq]

I missed your other question. If a pattern has a YO, you can use any other increase instead - m1, lifted or kfb. You can even yo but work it tbl on the next row to close it up, same as a m1 but done the row after, and it doesn't pull the yarn as much. There's a topdown raglan pattern generator at http://www.woolworks.org/patterns/raglan.html that does other incs. Also look through the advanced search in the patterns at Ravelry; you can specify raglan as a type of construction, and sweaters for the garment, adult for the size and so on. There's pages of pattern listed.

[Jan in CA]

I've use KFB and like the decorative bar on the raglan "seams". I've also seen mini cables between the increases.

There are patterns for seamless set in sleeves, too. A few short rows to create the shoulder cap and that's about it.

Found this link!
http://www.twistcollective.com/colle...g-your-options

[salmonmac]

Here is a link I couldn't get to until I got home. Eunny Jang talks about 2 ways, among the many, to do raglan increases.