Morning you amazing lot! I’m back again for some more help please. I am sewing on the sleeve for two jumpers (links below). I downsized the Little Lies sleeves as they were far too baggy. My sleeves on both sweaters wrapped nicely around my whole arm until sewn to the body and now they are both too tight at the top of my arm and they do not have the stretch they did pre-sewing. I desperately need to fix this as I want to wear both items after all this work. Please help… xx
https://www.woolandthegang.com/en/products/little-lies-sweater-kit
https://www.weareknitters.co.uk/knitting-kit/knitting-levels/easy-level/gamma-sweater
Re: Sewing on sweater sleeves
Those are beautiful sweater!
What method are you using to seam the sleeves? It may be that the sewing is just too tight.
It looks like both sweaters have drop sleeves (sleeves sewn directly to back and front with no armhole-shaped opening). If that’s the case then you can undo the seam, extend the length used for the seam. So if the sleeve is stitched on 6 inches from the shoulder seam on front and 6 inches on back, extend that to 7 inches or whatever is needed.
Thank you! You are an absolute angel, you really are. I hope you have even just a small inkling of how helpful you - and so very much appreciated. I have never known anyone know so much about knitting. Back to the sweaters - I used mattress stitch - and sewed the cast off edge of the sweater onto the edge of the main body. They are both stocking stitch and I was worried that stretching the sleeve our would distort the knitting on the sleeve. Would it help if I cast off in a stretch cast off such as in the video below? Thank you so much xx
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You’re too kind. Thank you.
A stretchier bind of is a very good idea. That’ll give you some ease at the sleeve top so that you can fit it into a longer armhole. I pin the sleeves in first to make sure they give the Goldilocks fit (not to tight, not too loose).
These are going to be fun to wear!
Nice tops. Is that yarn on the gamma sweater hard to knit with?
I just stopped by to suggest trying stretchy bind off and now I see you have suggested it yourself. I just discovered a bind off similar to this one recently. If you have not used this bind off before can I suggest you try it out on swatch first? I found I needed to mind the tension on mine, it was possible with my yarn to end up both too tight and no stretch or too loose and extra loops in my row.
Also when you do the mattress stitch are you tightening up and then pulling back out to soften the seam and stretch out the fabric? That’s another thing I learned.just sharing in case it helps.
Thank you both so very much for your help. I am working the stretchy bind off below and then, when I work mattress stitch (and I don’t pull the yarn out to soften the seam but I will), I will, perhaps, skip every fourth stitch on the body garment to ‘buy’ me some extra overall width. I have to be careful not to stretch the sleeve out too much as it stretches the stocking stitch (I am working on the Little Lies sweater at the moment) out and opens the pattern right up, which does not look good. Creations - the yarn for the Gamma sweater is a dream to knit with and not difficult at all. It knits up so very quickly and has made for a lovely warm sweater (although the neck is also a bit small so I have to shove my head through!!) x
Wow, it looks to me like it would be really hard to knit with.
Maybe you need the extra stretchy bind off on the neck too? Before I discovered there was even another way to bind off (I thought there was just one! How little I know!) I did a regular knit bind off on my son’s sweater but used a tip to change to a bigger needle and keep the tension super loose, barely staying on the needle. I was nervous thinking it would look bad but it was fabulous, lovely and stretchy.
Good luck with the sleeves.
You may not have to stretch out the sleeve top too much, maybe 2 inches (an inch on each side) will be enough. If you stretch it out too much, it’ll tend to pull back and pucker the sleeve top.
You can always take out some of the top of the sleeve, increase sts a bit more and then bind off. That would give you some extra width in the sleeve top.