Modify your raglan sweater pattern for a better hand knit fit

So you’ve knit a raglan sweater pattern or five and you’re ready to dive into the world of modifying for fit. Or, you see a pattern you love but the upper arm is too small. What do you do? 

Welcome to the beautiful world of raglan sweater pattern mods! I myself love knitting and wearing raglan-based sweaters. Consequently, I have walked test knitters through a variety of these mods. 

Consider the raglan sweater pattern you're starting with

Before you start, I'm assuming that you’re starting with a reasonably graded raglan sweater pattern with plenty of neck and shoulder shaping.

Then, make sure you have selected the right size for your upper bust. You'll ensure a better fit around the neck and shoulders where it’s way harder to make mods. 

Watch a video where I discuss size selection: YouTube.

Once you are sure of that, there are three raglan sweater mods that I find my testers and customers come back to time and again. 

Let’s get into it! 

Friendship Pullover by Aimee Sher

Knit a wider front for full bust adjustment

Listen. You all know already that I preach the gospel of short row bust darts and have seen some amazing results using them. However, they alone are not enough for busty folks, especially in a garment with less ease. 

When the front and back of the raglan sweater body have the exact same width, half of that positive ease gets distributed to the back. That means the ease is where you don’t really need it, and not in the front, where you really need it.

If, like me, you are small-breasted and you do not need the extra room, all is well and fine. If you have more breast tissue though, this becomes a problem because you could really use that extra ease in the front. 

What do you do when that happens? You add more width in the front only! This is far and away the mod my knitters need most often. I've seen so much success with this method that it’s now default. All my new raglan sweater patterns feature a wider front for sizes C or D and up.

How to work a full bust adjustment with width only

First, check to see if the raglan depth will land the end of the raglan above or below your full bust line.

• If the raglan ends above your full bust line, then all you have to do is continue the raglan increases in the front only. You can do this after completing raglan shaping and after you split for sleeves. Keep adding width here where you need it every row or every other or until you’ve got enough. 
• If the raglan ends below your full bust line, you likely don’t want to mess with that depth too much. You’ll want to add the width where you need it during the raglan shaping. Identify areas in the pattern that have every other or every 4th row shaping. Add a few more front only increases in there during the “work even” parts. 

Large bicep adjustment 

If you need more space in the arms than the designer has built into the pattern, you can work evenly spaced, extra increases in the arms only.

This is fairly straightforward, but I would add them where you need it most, likely towards the bottom half of the raglan sweater. To work this mod, you'll work fairly similarly to the wider bust one I mentioned above, but all you do is work extra increases in the sleeve only.

Map out the entire raglan. For many people who need this adjustment, the fullest part of the bicep is actually near the bottom of the raglan, and you don't yet need it up top. 

This is an example of what a Row 30-46 of a raglan section may look like if you do this: 

If you are one of the people who have more full bicep in the upper arm near the shoulders, you may need to start doing those extra increases earlier. 

Add only enough increases to get to the desired ease in the upper arm. Start small, and try picking the stitch count for the next size up from your selected size. That way, you can work that size's decreases to get to a reasonable wrist measurement. 

A word on sleeve adjustments

Wrists don't vary that much across sizes, so a well graded pattern will have a small range of variation across wrist sizes. That way, by choosing the next size up, you have a lot less work to do to make it work.

In quite a few of my patterns, size above Size C have more body increases than sleeve increases. This is because on the standard size chart, as the chest circumference increases, the upper arm circumference doesn't increase at the same rate. 

This gives you quite a few opportunities to do both body and sleeve increases instead of just body, to get you to the full bicep circumference you need. 

Broad Shoulder Adjustment

This mod is for people who have broad shoulders, which might look like stretching and tightness across shoulders in raglans. You need more fabric up top, but not more in the chest than is already there. 

Then, move some of the shaping rows from the middle section of the raglan to the top. So instead of working every other row, for example, you might want to work every row. Then change to working every 4th row.

This way, you'll increase out to a wider circumference quicker while preserving overall stitch counts by the end of the whole raglan section. The below example illustrates the first 18 rows of a raglan section before and after: 

You can ease the raglan line from the rapid increases to the slower increases. Do this by having a short section of every other row increase.

Just remember to try to keep the overall count of rows and increases consistent with the pattern. We're just adding the fabric width earlier where you need it.  

Shown is the Coloring Book Tee pattern

Restraint when making mods

You don’t need much when working this mod, so start small at first. Try one or two small tweaks in each project, so you can isolate them and see how they work for you. 

Finally...

If you'd like to skip the math, I totally understand. I've designed quite a number of patterns that have these features already.

My patterns Slightly Sassy V, Friendship Pullover, Weekday Dress/Pullover, and Weekday Tee all have a compound raglan feature built in.

Give one of these a try and see what you think. All of these patterns also have built in optional bust darts too. You can really finesse the fit without having to do the math yourself. 

Shop raglan patterns