Welcome to this Arnall-Culliford tutorial for Modern Daily Knitting on joining sleeves and
body to make the yoke of a sweater. This tutorial is part of a series to accompany the patterns
in MDK Field Guide Number 18: Beginnings. All of the patterns in this field guide
were created by the amazing Karida Collins. This tutorial is particularly going to help you to
make this lovely Debut Pullover, but it's also going to be really helpful for any situation
where you're joining the sleeves and body into the round to make the yoke of a seamless sweater.
To make it easier for you in the video tutorial to see what's going on, I'm working on a mini version
of the Debut Pullover. It's not got the same number of stitches as any of the patterns in the book,
and it just means that you'll be able to see more easily what's going on. The processes are
all completely the same as you'll do on a full size version. Knitting a sweater in the
round is a fantastic technique. There's minimal finishing required, and the most of the work
that you're going to do on your sweater is literally just knitting in the round.
This video is going to show you how to take your sleeves that you've worked as a single tube,
so we've got both of our sleeves there, and your body,
which is also just worked in the round as a single tube, a wider one, and I'm going to show
you how to join them all into one big tube that will make up the yoke of the sweater.
Let's just have a closer look at the top of the sleeve.
So we finished working in the round, and we've cast off a number of stitches
across the start of the round, and these stitches will make the underarm stitches.
You'll do a similar thing on the body where you'll cast off some stitches at the underarm,
and I'll show you how to do that in a minute. We're then going to join the sleeves and body
to make the yoke and then, at the very end, you'll come back, and you'll just seam this cast off edge
to the stitches on the body and that will close up the gap at the underarms. Just briefly going to
show you how to cast off the underarm stitches on the body. I'm working on a mini version here, so my
stitch counts will obviously be different to the ones in your pattern, but just do what your pattern
indicates. So I'm going to cast off four stitches across the start of the round marker here. So I'm
going to work two, and then I'm just going to lift one off to cast off one. I'm removing the marker,
work one and lift it over to cast off the second,
and the third,
and the fourth. And I'm now going to knit on until I come to the other side where I'll repeat that
to cast off for the second underarm. I've now finished my second underarm cast off, and I'm
ready to start working the joining round. So let's just orient ourselves with the parts of this round.
All of the stitches along this section here are going to be the back stitches until we come
to the gap where we did the first cast off. That first cast off is going to match up
with the cast off on the sleeve, and this will be the left sleeve. Left and right on
these pieces is always as they are worn. So back and then we'll join in the left sleeve,
and then all of the stitches after that cast off round to the beginning of the next one, these will
be the front stitches, and the second sleeve that we will join in here will be the right hand sleeve.
At this point, I find it helpful to switch onto a longer circular needle because you're going
to find that, just for the first few rounds where you've joined in the sleeves, it is a little bit
awkward getting around the corners, and if you're working on a longer circular needle. you can
just pull out a loop of cable that will make it easier to manoeuvre past those slightly tight bits.
It's really not difficult, and I'll show you how. We're starting the joining round, and the first job
is to work across the stitches of the back. In this pattern, we're just knitting them. We've
worked across the back stitches onto our longer needle, and we've come to the first cast off edge.
We now need to slip our first sleeve stitches onto a spare needle so that we can knit off them.
It doesn't really matter what needle you slip these stitches to. I'm going to put them on the end
of the long circular needle that i'm working from, and I want to end up with these stitches here just
after the cast off edge on the tip of the needle, ready to work across them. So in order
to end up with the tip of the needle there, I need to start slipping the stitches on here.
I'm going to leave the waste yarn in while I do this.
It's holding all the stitches safely. I'm literally just passing them on to this spare needle tip.
I've slipped roughly half onto my needle, and I've
slid them along onto the cable section so that I can continue to work on the second half.
Once the stitches are all safely on the needles, you can remove the waste yarn.
And this is what I mean about pulling out a loop. So I've got half of the stitches are sitting on
the cable, and the other half are on the tip, and that's going to make it easy to work across them.
So I'm using my working yarn where it was attached to my back stitches. I've just worked across the
back, and now all I need to do is literally just join these two pieces of fabric by knitting
straight across the sleeve stitches.
Those parts are now joined, and you can see that the two cast off edges
are going to be next to each other here, and they can be joined with a small seam later.
I've worked across the first half of the sleeve stitches, and I'm now ready to work across the
second half, and this is basically just magic loop knitting. So I'm pulling the second half stitches
onto the needle tip, and you'll see that that's too tight because of that small edge there.
I can't get the tips around to knit just straight from one tip to the other, so I'm going to pull
the stitches I've just worked, pull the needle through out of them and leave them on the cable.
And then I like to keep a few stitches on this right hand needle, so I've pulled it back
through again. So I've just put another loop of cable here, part way along those sleeve stitches,
and now if I swing it round, you can see I can now get the needle tip to move
so that I can knit across the second half of the sleeve stitches.
So I've knitted across the back and around my left sleeve stitches, and yeah, you can see it's starting
to look like a sweater. Here are the two bind off or cast off edges for the underarms, and they'll
be seamed later. And now we're going to work across the front stitches from our sweater. So I've still
got the body stitches on my other needle. So I'll just move up the tip here, and I can now
just carry on knitting from my sleeve stitches. I can carry on knitting across the front, literally
just making sure that the sleeve stitches are nice and snugged up against that first front stitch.
Having worked across the front we're now ready to join in the second sleeve,
and again, we're going to slip these stitches onto the free left needle tip.
And we're going to do so
so that the needle tip ends up in these, poking out the end of these stitches
here, just after that cast off edge, so that we're ready to work around in that direction.
Once we have about half of them on, we're going to pull them through so that they're on the cable,
and then we can carry on
slipping the remaining stitches onto the
tip. O've removed the waste yarn from these stitches, and you can see again
now that they are sitting on the needle so that the cast off edges of both the body and the
sleeve are facing each other, and we're now all set, poised to work across the right sleeve stitches
straight from the end of the front. And here we go,
that's roughly half the sleeve stitches worked. So I've come to the end of the ones
that were on the tip. The second half of the stitches are sitting on the cable at the moment.
So we're going to shuffle them along onto the needle tip.
Again you'll find that this is too tight if you try to put, bring the tips around to knit.
You'll find that this cast off edge there holds them, and it's not possible. So just
pull the needle out of the stitches you've just worked so that those stitches go onto the cable,
and you can just join around and work. Personally I find it easier to have a few stitches
on that right needle tip because it makes the tension easier to control.
And here we are, ready to work across the remaining right sleeve stitches.
I've come to the end of that first round where I've joined in the back, left sleeve,
front and right sleeve stitches. All that remains is to pop a marker on the needle to show where
the start of the round is. That's where it is for this pattern. Obviously if you're doing a different
pattern, it might be different. And now I can work again across the back stitches, and that will join
me into the round completely. Because we've got a gap at the moment and, again, those two
sets of cast off stitches will be facing each other, and they'll need to be seamed at the end
of the project or, or once you've worked a bit more of the yoke, you've got a bit more fabric.
You will find for the first few rounds that that join around the sleeve is a little bit tight,
but once you've knitted an inch or a couple of centimetres of yoke fabric, it'll get a lot easier.
So just give yourself a bit of time while you're doing these first couple of rounds,
and pull through a loop of cable that'll help ease it round the corner. I do
hope that watching our video tutorial on joining your sleeves and body to make the yoke of a yoked
sweater has given you heaps of confidence, and you now feel equipped to give it a go yourself.
Just to remind you this was the Debut Pullover by Karida Collins, this lovely design here,
that's featured in the MDK Field Guide Number 18: Beginnings. I've been working on a mini version
but you'll find the full pattern instructions in the book.
We have lots more hints and tips to help you in your knitting over on our website. There are
tutorials galore over there. Do click the link up top to head over there and explore. You can also
subscribe to our YouTube channel by clicking the button in the bottom right hand corner
so that you're sure not to miss our next video tutorial. Thank you ever so much for watching, bye!