Over the weekend, I worked my perpendicular join and began knitting the sleeve in the Zora sweater. Now, I know I’ve had my little rants about seaming before, particularly regarding the carpal-tunnel inducing 375 heavily cabled Aran weight stitches that will stand out forever in my mind when I think of Jared Flood’s “Timberline”. I believe I said “good seaming is part of good knitting” and I stand behind that, at least until we reach the sleeve.
Though I pride myself on my seaming, I don’t think I’ve ever sewn in a completely satisfactory set-in sleeve (or any sleeve, for that matter). While I worked the lovely clean lines of the seamless Zora sleeve, I got to thinking about the ways one can achieve a well-fitting shoulder where the sleeve emerges magically (and seamlessly) from the armscye.
I’m pretty sure it begins with the way we approach the armhole itself. As a sewer, I have a notion about the classic armhole and the way it is shaped; it’s an elliptical hole where armhole depth and width are taken into account. The curve at the base of the armhole is deeper in front than in back to allow greater width across the back of the garment. Zora’s armhole is a little different. Armhole depth and the number of rows in the armhole determine (to an extent) the number of stitches one has to deal with in the sleeve, but the armhole itself is rectangular. There are no fudge-y curves, just live stitches held at the underarm and knitted-up stitches along the armhole edges. (As an aside, the enchanted knitting-up process is a fairly recent “ah-ha” moment for me which I shall go into at greater length in another post.) The perpendicular join takes care of any excess fabric under the arm and produces a rather smart pair of diagonal lines running from the outer edge of the armhole to the center of the sleeve where the seam would normally lie. Altogether, the resulting sleeve is crisply shaped yet slightly more relaxed than a set-in sleeve, sitting casually on the outer edge of the shoulder.
A quick glance at Elizabeth Zimmermann’s “Knitting Workshop” revealed several other options for seamless sleeve and shoulder shaping. The classic saddle-shoulder is something I’ve always wanted to try, but every pattern of this type that I encounter involves the eventual seaming of the curved parts of the sleeve and armhole. Not necessarily, says EZ. The several seamless options also include the Hybrid, the Nalgar and the Shirt-Yoke along with the standard Raglan and seamless yoke.
Now that I’m looking, I’m seeing these clever techniques popping up in modern knitting design regularly. A stand-out for me and one I’ve been planning to knit for a while is the simple and elegant Purl Soho Pullover. We can easily see its antecedents in Elizabeth Zimmermann, no?
Swear I’m going to knit this as soon as I can face all that Stockinette stitch 😉
