Or more specifically, how to modify a jumper designed to be knitted in the round from the bottom-up so that you can work it from the top-down.
What’s the difference?
Let’s just quickly run through the order of things in the two methods. Starting at the bottom, you would usually work the body from the hem up to the armholes, stopping at a pre-determined body length. Then two matching sleeves are worked, starting with the cuff and shaping with increases up as far as the underarms. Finally, all sets of live stitches (three tubes) are joined into one yoke (with a little bit of shenanigans to leave some stitches at the underarms. Then the yoke is decreased as you work up to the neck, where the piece is cast off.
In contrast, if you start from the top at the neck, you will increase for the yoke, then put some stitches on hold for the sleeves while you work the body down to the cast-off at the hem. Returning to each set of sleeve stitches in turn, the sleeves are shaped with decreases down to the cuff, where each one is cast off.
Within that broad framework, the order of working might vary - for example the sleeves could be worked first from cuff up and then set aside.
There may or may not be body shaping, worked as decreases to a ‘waist’ followed by increases, or just shaped as an A-line, where the circumference at the hem is larger than at the upper body.
Why would anyone want to do that?
Two main reasons - if you have a certain amount of yarn available and want to make the best use of it, then top-down will enable that. When you work bottom-up, you have to take a bit of a gamble at the armhole
Won’t it mean a load of work (and maths, ugh)?
The answer to this is yes and no. It will involve some work, and a little bit of maths, but nothing too major. Remember the designer has done the grading work for you - stitches and rows measure the same whichever way you’re working, so you won’t need to change anything there.
The biggest difference between the two methods is how the shaping is worked - is it increases or decreases? So converting from one to the other is going to be form the basis of the conversion.
The second big issue is if there is a decorative stitch pattern. If it’s texture based on combinations of knits and purls, there won’t need to be any big changes, other than the stitches will look the other way up. If that bothers you, then converting from bottom-up to top-down probably isn’t for you in any case!
If the stitch pattern is more lacy in character, using combinations of yarnovers and decreases, then there will need to be a little bit more consideration than simply working the stitch pattern the other way up.
Ok, so how do I do it?
I’m going to work through an example of how I’ve done it, using Kate Heppell’s Comerford jumper. For full disclosure, I knitted the publication sample for Kate, so I’m reasonably familiar with the pattern already. You can enjoy some stunning photography of that sample here. I’d always had it in mind to make one for myself, and there was a suitable yarn in my stash. The only thing that I didn’t think would particularly suit me in the original design was the body length - I’m not a fan of the cropped look on myself. So I was always going to make the body longer, but by the time I got around to actually starting to work on it, the yarn in question had been discontinued. ‘That’s fine’ I thought, I’ll just make the body longer. But then thinking more carefully, how would I know how much longer I could afford to make the body without running out of yarn for the yoke? The safest option, and the way that would make most efficient use of the yarn would be to work from the top down, so all the critical-length pieces (yoke and sleeves) would be out of the way before even starting on the lower body, and then it would be much easier to carry on and work for as long as the yarn would allow. The other bonus would be that I would be able to try on the piece towards the end of the body to make a final decision on the length.
So far so good. I had a plan of action.
Cast on at the neck, using original pattern’s cast-off number.
Work yoke using chart in reverse (top to bottom) working increases instead of decreases for shaping, but working decreases as given in the chart when they are part of the pattern. Deciding which was which wasn’t too difficult, since this pattern pairs decreases with yarnovers fairly consistently for the patterning. I chose to use matched leaning increases, to replicate as far as possible the look of the original. One important difference remained - the original pattern uses ‘hook’ stitches - the third stitch on the left hand needle is lifted over the first and second and off the needle, then [k1, yo, k1] is worked into these two stitches to maintain the stitch count. Obviously this will look slightly different when the fabric is viewed the other way up, but I decided that looked better than using the reversed alternative. When reversed, they need to be worked over two rounds, the first one placing an extra stitch by working [k1, yo, k1] and then in the following round, working these stitches and then doing the ‘hooking’ manoeuvre to restore the stitch count.
Divide at underarms, using original numbers at armholes and placing same number of stitches as given for the maximum sleeve stitch count in original, on waste yarn for each sleeve. It was important here to think about where the start of rnd was in relation to the sleeves/body in the original and keep that the same.
Work to the end of the ball on the body stitches only.
Work each sleeve in turn downwards to the cuff, leaving body on hold. This was where I did veer off into a bit more maths - the original pattern used just three increase rounds for the sleeves, with multiple increases placed around the arm. Having tried the first of these, I realised that my shaping (using decreases) was going to be much more noticeable than the original (m1 increases) and I didn’t like the appearance of that round. So I calculated a more traditional sleeve where just two stitches would be decreased at the underarm, but more frequently down the majority of the length of the sleeve. Since most other bottom-up patterns use the more traditional style of sleeve shaping, this is unlikely to be necessary for many patterns.
Complete the body as far as the hem, making sure to allow enough yarn and vertical distance for the ribbing. Since I was going for a longer length, I decided to omit the waist shaping completely, but it would have been worked in the same way as on the original.
Important things to bear in mind
Don’t mix and match - if you try to join on to stitches worked in one direction and head off in the other, you’ll find there is an obvious line (at least in stocking stitch, because each stitch is V-shaped, and if you put a V on top of a Ʌ you can see what I mean) and if you attempt to pick up stitches from a finished edge, the loops will be offset by half a stitch.