Hope everyone is well. I hate knitting on circular needles and I was wondering if anyone has any flat knit, short sleeved top patterns? Cheap, affordable of free patterns would be preferable! Thanks
Flat knit top pattern?
Welcome to KH. Do you have a Ravelry account? If not you can join for free and search a vast data base that will give you more choices than you’d ever expect. You can specify things like knit flat and seamed. If you fall in love with a pattern written for circular knitting it could well be that conversion to flat is relatively simple. Ask here, you’ll get help. Meanwhile check out Ravelry.
There are lots and lots of free patterns on Ravelry. The true beauty IMO of using a free pattern is that if you need help anyone can look at it.
This is the link to Ravelry, for patterns that are free, short sleeved and knit flat. Good luck
If you have a local library, there should be a few pattern books with designs that are knitted flat. You can also take advantage of interlibrary loans to get books from other branches (may be free or a small admin charge).
Vogue Knitting and Rowan both have nice hardback collections of past patterns from their magazines. There are quite a few classic sweaters and tees knitted flat.
Another option would be any knitting book by Amy Herzog, a designer who favours seamed construction. Her books are quite popular and should be available in most libraries. (She does mostly have long-sleeve designs, but if you like a shape, changing to short sleeves is fairly easy to do.)
A slightly different approach is The Knitter’s Handy Book of Sweater Patterns by Ann Budd. This has a selection of basic designs (drop shoulder, set-in sleeve, raglan) given for multiple gauges. (Again, mostly long sleeves, but the book has good schematics that will help you work out a short sleeve option.)
(Ms Budd has another book with a similar title of top-down sweaters that are done in the round, so make sure to avoid that one!)
And here are a couple of free online patterns that might appeal:
(It shows a price when you click through to the Lion Brand website, but that is to purchase the yarn. Look for the “free download” button to the right of the picture.)