Top down capelet - increases question

[knitqueen]

I found an appropriate forum over at Ravelry and posted this there, but haven't gotten any responses yet so thought I'd try here:

My sister asked me to make her a capelet-style top to use as a nursing cover-up. I couldn’t find a pattern that she and I liked so I decided to try to design something.


I casted on the number of neck stitches, did a ribbed neckline for a couple of inches and then started increasing. I increased 8 stitches evenly around for one round, then knit one round plain, and repeated these two rows until an appropriate number of stitches was reached to allow it to hang over the shoulders. Then I started with plain knitting, around and around.


Once I reached about 8” total length, I slipped all my stitches onto a reaallllly long circular and slipped it onto myself to see how it was looking. I quickly realized that the front and back were going to hang down quite a bit further than the sides. It made sense to me at that point (wish it had occurred to me sooner!), that the front and back begin immediately to add to the length of the garment, whereas the sides don’t start getting longer until past the shoulders.


So I guess I’m looking for opinions or advice on how to achieve a more uniform finished length. I’m wondering what would happen if I continued increasing at the sides, and omit the front/back increases for a number of inches??


Help! And thanks in advance.

[suzeeq]

Probably make the increases about 4 sts every other row, or at least that's how it should be from the beginning.

[Mirl56]

I'd try to find a top down raglan sweater to see how it increases around the neck and over the shoulders and model your increases the same.

[suzeeq]

A top down raglan will generally have 8 increases every other row too - one at each of the 4 `seams'.

[knitqueen]

I don't think it's the number of increases that matter so much in this case, I think it's the placement of the increases that matter. I've done a bit of experimenting, and it seems that placing the increases as in a raglan style top (on either side of 4 markers) produces a more uniform lower edge than increasing the same number of stitches, but spaced evenly around.