There are a lot of different styles of top down seamless knit shoulders available. I’ve added one more, the blend of contiguous and raglan, an easy combo that produces an excellent fit which doesn’t pull on the point of the shoulder or cramp the shoulder line. It lays beautifully smooth and flat without bubble, wrinkle or fold.
So . . . here’s how it’s done in the simplest of terms. For the length of the shoulder line (where a sewn seam would be on a shirt) the sleeve increases (one from the back raglan and one from the front raglan) are moved to the top of the shoulder. Yup, it truly is that simple.
But when do I ever do anything the easy way? Come on, you know me. There’s nothing I do that I don’t change over time . . . nothing.
So, I knitted it and liked it . . . and then I noticed things I didn’t like. I changed some stuff and worked it some more but that wasn’t quite good enough so I changed it some more. And then I wanted it to go with back neck shaping so . . . yeah, you guessed it, I changed it some more. THEN I wanted it to . . . yeah, let’s not go there. For many that will be a bridge WAY too far.
After playing with this shoulder for most of two years I had most of the bugs worked out. I ran a knit-along in Ravelry that went okay. I learned a lot doing the tutorial and changed it more . . . but you guessed that, I’m sure. Then I made a spreadsheet to do the calculating so I could use any yarn and any size needle and in the process I learned even more. With all the changes I’m getting an easy and consistent fit regardless of needle size or yarn weight so it’s time to dive into helping others learn this beauty. Are you ready?
This really is an easy technique once you’ve worked through it a couple time. It’s a sequence knit that can be inserted into any raglan or contiguous pattern or used as the base for any type of sweater. For the tutorials I’m using the neck edge increases for a standard vneck sweater.
There are two parts to this tutorial, the actual conti-rag technique and the conti-rag technique with back neck shaping. I’m going to give them to you one at a time. Work through each tutorial in order and you’ll have this technique in your toolbox!
So, let’s dive in. First you’re going to need some supplies.