An Awesome Guide to Top-Down Raglan Design

If you’re at all interested in designing your own top-down sweaters, you need to read, follow, reread and absorb Kristen TenDyke’s amazing blog post all about how she designs top-down raglans. She uses Excel to help her with math, which is substantial, but logical. Thus the suggestion about rereading this piece, maybe a few times.

It’s a great resource for anyone looking to understand the process and mechanics behind designing a top-down raglan sweater. Kristen breaks down the steps in a clear and easy-to-understand way, including helpful tips and tricks along the way. From determining gauge and stitch counts, to shaping the neckline and calculating increases, her post covers it all.

Another great aspect of this post is the use of Excel to help with the math. Not everyone is comfortable with math and calculations, but Kristen’s use of Excel makes it accessible and easy to understand. The included pattern is also a great way to put the information into practice and see the math in action.

Overall, Kristen’s blog post is a must-read for anyone looking to design their own top-down raglan sweaters. It’s a comprehensive guide that will help demystify the process and give you the confidence to create your own unique designs.

There’s a simple raglan sweater pattern included in the post so you can sit with that and go through all the math if it helps you to see what’s happening.

This is so smart and helpful for anyone who wants to make up their own patterns for this knitting staple. Thanks for sharing, Kristen!

Have you ever written your own pattern for a sweater or another garment? I’d love to read about it.

[Photo via Kristen TenDyke.]

Looking for knitting patterns for knitted Cardigans? Check out these Knitting patterns we found on Etsy.

Looking for pullover and sweater patterns? Check these books out.

One of the fun things about knitters is that we will use a holiday theme on any kind of project. From Easter bunny socks to Christmas sweaters, there’s no combination of holiday motif and knitwear genre we won’t combine.

Case in point: Halloween cowls.

This fun cowl from Sweet Vireo Designs features large carved pumpkins and little cats and skulls. It uses two colors of DK weight yarn and I love the multicolored yarn for the background color on this one. And the braids! So cute.

Spooky Season by Jocelyn Tunney (also on Ravelry) uses fingering weight yarn in two colors to make a design with crescent moons and eyes. There are two circumferences and two heights available so you can make it a neck hugger or a slightly bigger project if you like.

Make more moons with the Broom Riding Cowl from Vanessa Ewing Knits. This two color pattern looks extra fun with a multicolored yarn for the colorwork, but you can use a solid as well. It calls for DK weight yarn but there is also a fingering weight version if you have some yarn in your stash you want to use.

Jinx Made has another fun Halloween cowl, this time covered in skulls. South Philly Skulls uses DK weight yarn and comes in two lengths, and there’s also a matching hat pattern, both of which can be found on Ravelry.

The Ghost Stories cowl from Melissa Knit Wear is a two-color cowl with ghosts of different sizes on the body. It uses DK weight yarn, and average sized skeins will allow you to get two cowls out of two skeins. It also calls for stitch markers to help you keep your place in the chart.

Or stitch up a cowl with a giant bat on it. The Nightling Cowl from Jen Immer uses DK weight yarn in two colors and has moons and a large bat on it. This pattern can be found on Ravelry.

How about spooky trees? The Weirwood Cowl from Andrea Krüß-Anders is inspired by the weirwood trees in the Game of Thrones books, and is worked in two colors of fingering weight yarn. You can find this free pattern on Ravelry.

If a bandana cowl is more your thing, try Cowloween from Tellybean Knits (on Ravelry). This colorful design is worked from the top down and features pumpkins, ghosts and candy colored stripes, and is worked in a light fingering weight yarn. There are kid and adult sizes available.

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