An Approach to Seaming a Seamless Sweater

I’m kind of conflicted when it comes to seams and sweaters. I understand logically that seams are important. They bring stability to a piece, can help it hold its shape through washing and wearing, and can be used to add a decorative element to a piece of knitting.

But I also understand that seaming is not a lot of fun. So I tend to limit the number of seams in my projects, for instance by knitting the body from the bottom up, seaming the shoulders and then working the sleeve from the top down.

Audrey Knight is working through an idea to make a seamless project more stable, and I’m really interested to see how it turns out. So far she’s talked about casting on for a top-down sweater in the middle of the neckline so that, like a bottom up or pieced sweater, there’s a bound off (well, cast on, here) edge where stitches are picked up and knit from to finish the neckline.

It’s a really interesting concept and it certainly should add more stability to the neckline.

I look forward to seeing how it all turns out!

What do you think about seams in sweaters? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[Photo via AudKnits.]

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A Terry’s Chocolate Orange is a classic Christmas gift in the UK that has become more popular in America as well. And if you know knitters, you know they’re going to cover something in knitting if they can, so there are lots of different Christmas themed chocolate orange knitting patterns out there (which you could use for an actual orange as well if that’s in your traditions).

Chocolate orange covers seem to be one of those projects where a designer makes a lot of variations on the theme, so we’ll just touch on a few here but you can further explore the designer’s works if you like what you see.

Wild Welsh Knitting has a cute little set of orange covers that look like little drawstring bags. There’s a snowman, a Christmas tree and a robing, and they are all worked in DK weight yarn. This designer has lots of cute little Christmas projects, not just for oranges.

Wendy Morgan has a bunch of chocolate orange cover knitting patterns, not just for Christmas, but for our purposes I wanted to point out the set that includes a Santa, reindeer and Christmas pudding. It’s available on Ravelry, and the pieces are worked flat using DK weight yarn.

Rebecca Roberts is another designer on Ravelry who does a bunch of Christmas chocolate orange cover knitting patterns, but I wanted to share this post box one because I think it’s really cute and not a design I’ve seen from others. It has a little bird on top and you could change up the colors to make it a TARDIS (yes I know that’s a phone box, not a mail box, but still) if you wanted.

Made by Marianna has a great set of her Christmas orange cover knitting patterns available on Etsy if you want to make a bunch of different designs. This collection includes six patterns: a Christmas pudding, Santa hat, snowman, Christmas trees, elf hat and Santa’s belt. The Christmas tree is shown above. All of the patterns use DK yarn.

Secret Garden England has a bunch of cute holiday patterns, too, but if you’re stitching for someone who doesn’t have a lot of Christmas cheer, you’ll want to make this Grinch one. The details are so cute, and while you’ll need more supplies to add all those things, it’s well worth the effort!

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