I'm Karen, a professional tailor who knits. If you need help with knitting math, contact me at kwehrleATgmail DOTcom.
For a limited time (until I get some testimonials), I'll help you crunch numbers for FREE! Really? Yes, really. Don't let another sweater go bad! Email me today.
You spent good money on yarn you love for a pattern you like.
You spent hours upon hours knitting or crocheting it into your dream sweater.
You wove in the ends. You blocked it.
You tried it on.
Does it fit? Does it flatter? NOOOOOOO!
Is it ten kinds of wrong or just not quite right?
Either way, welcome to Knits Gone Bad, the KnitFitNinja blog. You’re no doubt sorry to be here.
Never mind. Let’s get to work and make sure your next damn sweater fits like a glove, like a dream come true.
It will have style that does your body favors, color that makes you glow and fit your unique shape just right, just the way you like it. You may never want to take it off!
Let a professional tailor help make it so, Number One. Ready?
We can do this.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Please leave a comment below telling me your toughest fitting challenge or a mistake you’d love to never make again. Does your sister keep getting your hand-knit sweaters because they fit her instead of you? Let me know.
How coins show stitch gauge equals different size sweaters!
If knitting math confuses you, it’s hard to know what size your sweater will turn out. If you’re tired of knitting sweaters that don’t fit you or anyone you know, grab some loose change. A handful of coins will help clear up the confusion for you in a visual way.
Line up 5 pennies side by side in a straight row.
Let’s pretend those five pennies equal one inch of knitting. I know a row of five pennies measures more than one inch long, but work with me here. We’re pretending.
Now let’s say your sweater expects you to knit five stitches per inch and you want to knit a sweater that measures 40 inches around the chest.
Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to do math.
If those five pennies equal one inch of your sweater and you need 40 inches of sweater–that’s a long line of pennies! (200 of them!)
Now line up 5 dimes side by side.
If you line them up beneath the row of pennies, you’ll instantly see a difference in size between one line of coins and the other. If five dimes equals one inch of sweater and you need 40 inches of sweater–this time it’s not such a long line.
Gauge works kinda sorta like that.
The size of your stitches can make an enormous difference in the size of your sweater. Imagine how much bigger your sweater would be if your five stitches were quarters!
So next time you knit a gauge swatch and don’t get gauge, what does that mean?
Here’s the other confusing part.
If you have MORE stitches per inch than the gauge calls for, your sweater will fit SMALLER. Seems backwards, doesn’t it? The MORE stitches per inch is dimes instead of pennies. They’re smaller stitches. See?
If you have FEWER stitches per inch, your sweater will fit BIGGER. The FEWER stitches per inch are BIGGER stitches, more like nickels or quarters instead of dimes.
Now put away your change before someone comes along. They’ll call you a loony if you say the coins are stitches teaching you about knitting math and gauge.
Best,
Karen
P.S
I hope this helped you understand gauge. If it didn’t, don’t despair. There’s lots more help here, complete with pictures.
How do you wash a sweater that’s a thing of beauty–and not wreck it? You chose a style that does you favors, in a color that makes you glow, knitted it with care so the stitches are beautiful, blocked and seamed it like a pro, your size and fit are spot on, and you love wearing it. Does it fit your lifestyle? What happens when you wash it? What kind of use and care does your sweater want so it doesn’t shrink, stretch, pill or die?
Sweater use and care versus your lifestyle.
If you hike through brambles, drive a school bus, and wrestle with kids and pets so much there’s little time for washing delicates and laying them out to air dry, your precious sweater may a) never get washed at all, or b) get tossed into the washer and/or dryer by mistake. If not by you, then by a person who helps out in a pinch.
Speaking of pets, watch out for teeth or claws near your sweater. They can catch and pull out a long snag in a heartbeat. Ask me how I know.
What sweater fiber will survive the washer and dryer?
Acrylic, better if you don’t bake it to death.
Superwash wool.
Cotton, as long as you’re aware it can stretch and sag while soggy, you don’t bake it all the way dry either, and remember that some colors may bleed onto others.
Speaking of which, throw something red into the wash with your sweater if you just LOVE pink overtones and splotches. You’ve been warned.
What fibers won’t tolerate your machines?
Wool, because it fulls or felts. This is where your beautiful sweater becomes doll-size.
Bamboo, because it swells when wet and/or loses cohesiveness.
Don’t hang it up!
Sweaters prefer to lie quietly in a drawer when not being worn. Otherwise they’ll grow wicked pointy shoulders on your hanger and stay that way when you wear them. Not a good look.
So to recap, here’s how to wreck your gorgeous finished sweater.
Toss it in a basin or the washer with hot water and harsh soap, with an item that’ll bleed on it, and agitate it like it got filthy in the Labreya tar pits. Yank it out while wet so you stretch it out of shape. Bake in a million degree dryer for a week. Ta-da! Your sweater is now unrecognizable, unwearable and can’t ever be brought back to vibrant life.
Yes, I could cry along with you. Here’s hoping you or a loved one will NEVER wash a sweater wrong.
Do you have a ruined sweater horror tale you’d like to share? Feel free to tell me in the comments. I can offer tea and sympathy as long as you make the tea!
How many of your hand-knitted sweaters have been ruined or stressed out because you’ve been double blessed by the boob fairy? Which sweater fitting mistake keeps tripping you up? Do you make a tent that hides your waist so you have no shape at all? Do you make a sweater that stretches too provocatively over your assets? Are you doomed to wear ill-fitting sweaters?
Not a chance. Here’s a tip you may have overlooked.
Perhaps you’ve tried Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Percentage System with pretty good success. As a gal with plenty of bust, you can tweak your pattern for better fit.
Find a great-fitting sweater you already own.
Lay it down flat and measure it from armpit to armpit. This tells you how much ease you enjoy best in a sweater. Got that number? EZ calls it your key number.
Put on your best bra.
You know, the one with great support so you look ten pounds thinner? Yes, you may want it under this next sweater with great fit. Find out what you measure around your bust in your good bra. Got it?
Now for the tip: measure yourself from side seam to side seam across your front. Not your back. Just your front. Got that number?
Betcha it’s more than half of your bust measurement.
You need more room up front than you need across your back. So make your next sweater with a wider front and a narrower back. You’ll have the same number of stitches overall, just redistributed to better accommodate your curves.
Your armholes will be closer together in back than they are in front. Compare your numbers with your gauge and figure out how many stitches (what percentage of your key number) you’ll switch from back to front.
No more baggy back or stretched armholes in front!
If you make a bottom up sweater with a narrower back and a fuller front, you’ll decrease more stitches from bust to neckline on the front than before, more than on the back.
You might like more length in the front as well. Some short rows can help here as they won’t change the side seam length and mess you up when you seam a pieced sweater. No more boob fairy sweater fitting mistakes for you. Happy knitting!
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Thanks to Robin Hunter at KnittingRobin for this great sweater fitting tip.
How many times have your knitting math mistakes ruined a sweater that you otherwise knit very well? Have you EVER gotten a sweater to fit the way you dreamed while you cast on, knit each stitch, bound off, blocked, and seamed? Couldn’t you just scream? Do you need a brain transplant to make knit fit every time?
Try EPS instead of a CAT scan.
Perhaps you already know about EPS, Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Percentage System. Hailed as the mother of all knitters, EZ invented a way to create your own sweaters without a pattern. How? By comparing the difference in size between the chest, sleeves, neckline width, armholes, waist and wrist.
If you knit very well but suck at knitting math, you can use her easy system. All you need to knit a sweater that fits great is your gauge swatch and a handy calculator.
Not so fast, you say? Your calculator lies to you?
If the word PERCENTAGE resides in your personal dungeon alongside FRACTIONS and MATH, maybe you don’t see this system as easy. What if you fumble over figures, get a different answer every time, don’t even understand what the number you got means?
What you need is a math monkey.
A math monkey is someone who’ll double-check your figures for you. Where do you find such a person?
Do you know another knitter?
Most knitters are warm, friendly, inventive people just like you with a heart of gold and a soft spot for a fellow knitter in trouble. Someone you know could be a knitting math whiz. You can tell by all the great-fitting hand-knitted sweaters, hats, gloves and such he or she wears.
Don’t know any knitters in person besides yourself?
I feel your pain. I had an aunt who knitted (and taught me how to purl), but she died long ago. Now it’s just me.
Lucky for you, you don’t need another knitter.
That teenager next door who baby sits for you sometimes might get straight A’s in calculus or geometry. She can double-check your figures. You might even get her interested in taking up knitting. She can ensure you make your knit fit every time.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Please don’t beat yourself up over poor math skills. EVERYONE makes knitting math mistakes. Either that or they’re just not trying. Hee! Let me crunch your numbers so your next sweater (hat, mittens, whatever!) fits great. Make your knit fit every time. Just shoot me an email at kwehrleATgmailDOTcom.
You can finish off knitting three ways. If you want to bind off or cast off, just knit the first two stitches, insert your left needle into the first stitch you knitted and pull it over the second stitch so the first stitch is wrapped around the neck of the second stitch. Repeat: knit another stitch, pull the other stitch over it. When you reach the last stitch, cut the yarn so you leave a long tail and yank the tail up through the last stitch. If you already know all that but fear you’ll wreck your sweater by mis-weaving in ends, or blocking or seaming it wrong, stay tuned. The third way? Kill it dead.
Who would want to kill their sweater on purpose? Nobody. But get in a big old hurry and rush through the finishing and you just might kill it. How?
Blocking wrong can wreck your sweater.
Some folks heat up their iron and press the tar out of their acrylic sweater. Surprise! Acrylic melts. Might gunk up your iron real bad too.
If your sweater is knit in pieces, block them first, then seam them. If you soak your pieces and haul them willy-nilly out of the water, you can stretch your knitting, poke a hole in it or break the yarn. Support the weight like you would a newborn baby. It’s just as tender.
If you use hot soapy water and a shock of cold rinse water on non-superwash wool, your sweater can shrink or felt in patches. Not good.
If you get past the soaking/rinsing part, pressed out the excess water and spread the pieces out to dry, you can still wreck it. Pay no attention to what size or shape they end up so they’re nice and crooked. If your fronts and back are different lengths, they won’t match up when you join them. Or one sleeve could be longer than the other. Use pins that hate water so your sweater gets rust stains before it dries. Nice, eh?
You could pin your pieces out the right size, spritz with water until damp and let dry. Or apply gobs of steam with an iron held just above the knit fabric. Then leave the room. Your dog or cat will enjoy this marvelous new toy you spread out just for him or her.
How and when do you weave in yarn ends?
You can weave in ends before blocking, or some folks–especially lace knitters–weave them in after. Some work yarn tails under bumps on the backside with a crochet hook or dull yarn needle. Don’t weave a red tail through a white area or it’ll show through. Slippery yarns will slide back out and might need nailed down with sewing thread or a teensy dot of glue. Not a gob. Yikes!
Some skim yarn ends through upper edges of bumps on the backside with a sharp needle. Let’s talk blood, shall we? If you prick your finger and bleed on your knitting, your spit might take it out. Be quick before it dries.
Time for seaming.
If you rush through this, I guarantee your sweater will look homemade in the worst way. Want to put your sweater in peril? Ignore tutorials for how to do mattress stitch. If you can’t make head or tails of that method, there are other ways you can seam. Some folks join pieces with a crochet chain stitch which can look very nice with the right size hook, yarn and tension–or all wrong. If you don’t redo a botched seam, trust me, everyone will know.
Some folks stitch sweater pieces together with a sewing machine. That can work if your presser foot doesn’t hook on your stitches–unless the fabric stretches as you go, which leaves a seam that’s all sea serpent humps. Ripping this bad boy out can be a nightmare.
Buttons or zippers add a whole new area fraught with disaster.
A poorly-anchored button can yank a yarn loop out so the button dangles. A zipper can catch in the knitting, distort or misalign the knitting, or ripple like a sea serpent’s humps (again).
If all this talk of potential disasters in finishing off knitting frightens you, you could always ball your project up, stuff it in a bag and hide it until you feel brave enough. Or hire someone who can finish off knitting–in the best way–so you wear your sweater with pride.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Here’s a great tutorial on steam blocking–with NO pins! Thank you, Annie Modesitt. (Not an affiliate link–just some love for teaching me combination knitting!)
Once upon a time (a week or two ago) when I took a wee knitting break, I saw a video of the Yarn Harlot, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, knitting like the wind. Have you seen it?
She tucks a straight knitting needle under her right arm, slides stitches onto it with her left needle held crosswise and flips yarn stitch after stitch like a sewing machine. On speed. Her hands almost blur.
I’d seen it before. It looked too much like throwing for my taste. I’m a continental combination knitter with enough speed to knit 40 pairs of socks and 40 beanies for Socks for Soldiers, plus half a dozen pair of socks for me and mine in under two years. I’m pleased.
This time, I couldn’t stop thinking she knits faster than me.
She’s allowed, of course.
But I love speedy knitting. Many, many soldier feet and hearts need some comfy love ASAP. If I could whittle my average time down from a pair in ten days, to a pair every week or so….
I was about an inch into the stockinette of the beanie on the left when I saw the video. I changed the yarn to my right hand, mimicked her hand positions and tried Stephanie’s “Irish Cottage” production style of knitting.
Whoa, baby. Did those first two rows go tight!
I tinked back and tried again. Better. After about an inch, I could see the new knitting style still made the gauge tighter than my old style. I tore back and tried again. After two inches, it was still a tighter gauge than my old style, but the stitches were a beautiful, even tension. My old style looked lumpy bumpy by comparison.
Wow! Too bad I didn’t take a photo of it.
I frogged the beanie back down to the last ribbed round and knitted all the stockinette part Yarn Harlot style. I’m not sure how fast it went, but not bad. Then I made a second beanie, this time using her style for the ribbing too.
Heavens, it was slow.
K1P1 ribbing her style takes twice the motion of my style. What surprised me more: it took more rows to create 2″ of ribbing.
7.5 stitches per inch gauge on first "Irish Cottage" beanie.
8.25 stitches per inch gauge on second "Irish Cottage" beanie.
9 stitches per inch gauge on first beanie's ribbing.
10.5 stitches per inch gauge on second beanie's ribbing.
Both hats fit fine, but the Irish Cottage ribbing feels more snug. You’d think the hats would have the same gauge in the stockinette part, but they’re not quite. As I got faster the gauge got tighter!
Now I know why I had tighter tension all along.
You may already suspect why, but let me explain.
Today I’m on the heel flaps of sock pair #40. I did the ribbing my way and it zipped right along. I’ll do the stockinette part her way–but with one significant difference. I’ll hold the yarn in my right hand the exact same way I hold yarn in my left hand.
Left hand: over index and ring fingers, under the others. I’ll do the same with the right. No more looping yarn around one finger. I think that’s what made my gauge tighter. Yes, I know. Duh!
Best,
Karen
P.S.
I loved learning the new style. What’s not to love about sweet, even stitches? With different hand motions at the ready, I can change off knitting styles and prevent repetitive stress injuries. That means I can do…More Knitting!
Even if you’re an identical twin, you are one of a kind. Your unique body is beautiful, even though you yourself may regard some part as a body flaw. Do you have a special fitting challenge that makes all your hand-knitted sweaters fit not quite right? Do they choke you, ride up, lay crooked? Try these sweater fitting tricks.
Pick the right style for your body shape.
It’s too bad no single style can fit and flatter every column, hourglass, apple or pear shape. You know best which features you like about your body, which you want to hide. Choose a style which puts the focus where you want it instead of where you don’t.
A person with narrow shoulders may do better with a boat-neck sweater for added visual width versus a raglan sleeve sweater that can emphasize any downward slope in your shoulders. If you’re hippy, a long loose sweater can look better than a cropped jacket style.
Your pattern designer didn’t factor in your special fitting challenge.
That doesn’t mean you must wear a tent to hide what you don’t like. Make allowances in the pattern for where you need more or less fabric. Great fit starts with the shoulders. Get that right and you’re on your way. Get it wrong and you’ll look like you’re wearing your father’s sweater–or your child’s.
Blessings in disguise.
If the boob fairy double-blessed you, adding short rows provides extra shaping to better accommodate your blessings. Maybe you’ve always avoided an empire waist because it cuts across your bust instead of snuggled right below it. Add more length in the upper bodice and dart shaping. Land the waistline right under the bust where most women are smallest and suddenly you look like a queen.
If a too-generous backside or tummy makes your sweaters gap open in front, add stitches at your side seams or evenly spaced around you for more fullness. Believe it or not, you may want more fullness if you have no backside at all.
Maybe one hip is higher and makes your sweater hem lay slantwise. Add short rows as needed from waist to hem on that side so it lays straight. No one will ever know.
Cap sleeves make upper arms look rounder–not what you want if your arms aren’t slim and muscular. Add more length, perhaps more fullness. Find a magic sweet spot that’s just right for you. Copy the sleeves of a garment you already own that flatters your arms.
A little extra length in the back of a sweater can help them fit better on most everyone. Try some short rows across the center back and below the neck. No more drafts!
If you use these custom sweater fitting tricks for your next hand-knitted sweater, it’ll wrap you in ultimate comfort that fits and flatters your unique body.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
For help with how to do short rows and such, you can’t beat TECHknitting for clear explanations and excellent illustrations. Thumbs up. That’s NOT an affiliate link, just an enthusiastic endorsement from an admirer. She taught me how to Kitchener stitch with a knitting needle.
Were you betrayed by a knitting gauge swatch? Holy wool, is there no justice? If you dutifully knit and measured a gauge swatch despite your eagerness to cast on for your project, why doesn’t the darn sweater fit? How on earth did the dirty no-good lying gauge swatch ruin your sweater? Sad to say, but even the best knitters encounter gauge swatches that lie.
Here are the top six reasons a gauge swatch lies.
Your emotional state.
You think you’re in an emotional state now with a finished sweater you can’t wear, but your emotions while knitting both the swatch and sweater can make a difference to the success of your project.
If you resent the time a gauge swatch takes before you start your project, you may knit the swatch tighter out of peevishness or hurry-scurry. Or you may knit your swatch more loosely, figuring it’s a short-term thing you’ll rip out or throw away and needn’t be your best work. Yikes!
Your yarn color.
What? Yes. If you knitted with the same size needles and same yarn in the past but in a different color, you need to swatch again. Some dye colors add thickness to the yarn. (In my sad experience, black is a yarn-fattening culprit.)
Your swatch’s stitch pattern.
Did your knitwear designer make it clear whether you should measure a stockinette swatch–or one in the stitch pattern? They could be radically different.
Your measuring tool.
Elizabeth Zimmermann, mother of all knitters, recommended you use a stiff ruler instead of a flexible measuring tape. I’m not about to argue with EZ’s vast experience. How about you?
Your gauge swatch size.
If you make a wee swatch, gravity will have little effect upon it. A larger swatch will have weight and possible drape, just like your sweater.
You washed and dried it, right?
This annoying, time-consuming step makes a tremendous difference sometimes. The yarn can relax, soften and bloom, thus affecting the character and gauge of the fabric. Or it may lose some sizing you didn’t know was there. Not only will you get a more accurate gauge measuring a washed swatch, you’ll discover what the fabric will be like in the finished sweater.
As a bonus, doing the gauge swatch shows you which knitting needle works best with the yarn before you cast on hundreds of stitches on a needle that fights with you.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Elizabeth Zimmermann would knit a hat in lieu of a gauge swatch. Besides telling her truthfully everything she wanted to know about the yarn before she made the sweater, it would be useful and fit someone’s head!
Unfortunately for some of us, how to gauge knitting involves making a nice big gauge swatch. For best results, you bind it off, then wash and dry it as you would your knitted item. When you measure across two or four inches in the middle you discover the exact number of stitches you get per inch. If the very idea of a gauge swatch gives you the willies, you may just cast on in hopes anything close to gauge is good enough. Hello, math fudge.
Let’s talk about fudge.
In knitting, there are two kinds of fudge: unforgiving fudge and beneficial fudge.
Unforgiving fudge–not the delicious kind that expands your hips.
Let’s say your sock pattern wants a gauge of 8 stitches per inch on 64 stitches for a sock that measures 8 inches around your foot. Maybe your gauge is almost, but not quite 8 stitches per inch so you say, Fudge it, that’s about right.
If your gauge is really 7 3/4 stitches per inch, your 64 stitches will make your sock 8 1/4 inches around. Just a tad looser. No biggie, right?
Now let’s say your sweater pattern wants a gauge of 5 stitches per inch on 210 stitches for the 42 inches you need around your chest. If your gauge is almost, but not quite right so you say, Oh fudge, that’s good enough, what happens? Say your real gauge is 5 1/2 stitches per inch. What size sweater will you get with your 210 stitches? It’ll measure a tad over 38 inches.
With this gauge, the classy sweater you hope will impress your fiance’s parents goes from lady-like to boob-hugging. Oops. That’s unforgiving fudge.
Beneficial fudge–a bit like the delicious kind that lifts your mood.
Knits can be very accommodating as they stretch and adjust around your body. You can block them larger or smaller. Maybe you can shrink your sock a bit or block out your sweater to 42 inches and save your modesty. I hope you can’t see your bra shining through the stitches. There’s a limit to the beneficial forgiveness sometimes. Just saying.
If you can’t stand to swatch, see how to gauge knitting from making a sleeve or hat. Elizabeth Zimmermann would understand.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Warning: If you feel put upon and peeved while knitting your gauge swatch, it will be tighter than your gauge while knitting your sweater. Your sweater will turn out bigger than you expect. I know–arrgh! Maybe you could elevate your mood by eating fudge while knitting your swatch?
Did you ever knit a sweater with a pattern in your size, but have it turn out completely the wrong size? What happened? Perhaps you grew or shrunk since last time you measured yourself or your knitting gauge was off. Or maybe the knitting pattern designer used a different standard size chart. How can you know what size he or she means? How can you know your sweater will fit?
Finding the right pattern size can take some study.
Start with the number of inches in the pattern’s chest size. The given finished size might or might not include ease at all, much less the amount of ease you like best.
If you’re lucky, the pattern will give you the chest size the sweater will fit—and also the approximate finished bust size in inches. What’s the difference? The designer is showing you how much ease he or she factored in. Aces!
Next check the gauge for the pattern.
Say it’s 20 stitches for 4 inches, and let’s say you get this gauge when you knit your swatch.
Pick the sweater size you think will fit you.
Now add the amount of ease or wiggle room you prefer. Say you want 42 inches total around the chest. The number of stitches you need for this particular sweater is 210 stitches.
Double check if the pattern says you’ll have enough stitches at the chest.
Maybe it doesn’t say.
In that case count the cast on stitches and add the increases you’ll make until the chest is reached. How many stitches does the pattern call for? Anywhere near 210 stitches?
Do you need to go up or down a size?
Better you find out now, before you cast on. Armed with this information, you may never knit a wrong-size sweater again.
Best,
Karen
P.S.
Would you like to take a gander at some standard size charts? Here’s one for misses, women, mens, and one for calculating ease!
Disclosure
The links I provide on this site have earned my seal of approval as helpful to you. Some of them are affiliate links and may earn me some money.
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