It's All in the Details: A Tale of Two Design Elements

"It was the best of design elements. It was the worst of design elements..."

In this case, I'm talking about the neckline and the shoulders of the Ty Cobb Sweater.

Neckline decreases. (left: HOF; right: reproduction.)

Example of "smooth" decreases

The neckline is one of those construction details that left me scratching my head. It's the first time we run into "shaping"--that's just a fancy way of saying stitches are being increased or decreased--and considering the clean, simple lines everywhere else on the sweater, the method used here was a little jarring. (Well, okay, for a knitter it was a little jarring).

As you can see, the neckline tapers from the button placket to the shoulder. Generally when I've seen stitches decreased, the idea is to create a smooth line, so that one part of the knitting looks like it's going underneath. You see that kind of "smooth" decrease most often on socks, as I've shown in a close-up from one of my own designs. However, for the Ty Cobb Sweater, the neckline decreases go the opposite way (note the red circles), which makes them stand out. When I first saw that shaping, the lack of aesthetics almost made me cringe. (Sorry. That's my inner knitting designer talking.)

Example of mattress stitch join (inside).

What really confuses me is WHY? It's not as if "smooth" decreases are harder to knit than the ones used here. I don't have much basis for comparison, but since this type of shaping appears on all of the other baseball sweaters I've seen, I can only assume it was standard at the time.

Fortunately (at least for my inner designer), the lines everywhere else on the sweater are GORGEOUS--so nice, in fact, that the question becomes, "Why aren't we still making them this way?"  I don't mean mass-produced sweaters either; even hand-knit ones no longer have such elegant construction.


The nicest example appears at the shoulders. Nowadays, shoulders are either attached together using a sewing machine (this is generally seen with store-bought sweaters) or something called a "mattress stitch." While a mattress stitch join can be pretty on the outside, it leaves a thick seam on the inside.

Original HOF Sweater shoulder join, outside and inside

However, if you look at the original HOF sweater, you'll notice that the shoulders are, quite literally, seamless. Now, if you remember my pictures of the finished body, that might not make sense at first. After all, the body is knit flat. How can you attach the front and back together without seams?

Grafting the shoulder using a Kitchener Stitch

Well, obviously there have to be seams; they're just invisible. It turns out that if you use a form of grafting called a "Kitchener Stitch," you can use a sewing needle to create the look of knitted stitches. (Note: For you history buffs, yes, the technique was named for Lord Kitchener, although clearly it predates World War I. Heaven knows what it was called before that.) It's a standard technique for closing the toes of hand-knit socks, but it's not often found in shoulders. As you can see, my Kitchener-Stitched reproduction ends up with shoulders just as pretty as those on the original.

Reproduction with finished shoulder join

From here on out, the design elements continue to be both graceful and logical--except for those damn decreases. (Yes, there are more of them.) Obviously, if I were the one designing the sweater, I'd do them differently. However, since the point is an accurate reproduction, I've just sucked it up and moved on. Whatever.