Fit to flatter is a ten-part series of tutorials on choosing and modifying knitting patterns to flatter your shape. These tutorials will be released every two weeks both as blog posts (free) and as separate, professionally formatted PDF files for printing (nominal charge). Should you desire the PDFs, each installment can be purchased from the tutorial page as they are released, or via a “buy now” button at the end of the installment. Individual installments are US$2.00 and at the end of the tutorial series the whole series will be available for $US10.00. All text copyright Amy Herzog and all images copyright splityarn 2010, unless where otherwise noted. I hope you enjoy the series!

This ten-part series is not about making you feel badly about what you have already knit. It is not about making you feel badly about your shape, or about making you feel like you can only knit certain things, in certain yarns. In writing these tutorials, I want to help you learn basic principles for dressing the figure you have in the most flattering way possible.

Every person reading these words has both fabulous assets to show off and a thing or two that you wish would disappear forever (or, in some cases, appear forever). The fact is this: Though I won’t argue that we’d all be healthier if we exercised more, wearing flattering clothes will do much more to change the way you feel about your body than losing weight or gaining muscle will.

As knitters, we have the ultimate power of creating a piece of couture perfectly suited to our figures, every single time. Your hand-knits should make you look and feel like a million bucks, and not just because of the skill required to form the stitches. I want to help you get there.

Previous installments have covered all the generalities of determining your own shape and what sorts of sweaters flatter it. Now it’s time to tackle individual garment elements that are easy to modify and have a big impact on flattery. In this installment we’ll focus exclusively on necklines. Future installments will cover other garment elements, advanced sweater modification, and custom sweater design.

The Basic Question: Broad or Deep?

There are nearly as many necklines out there as there are women to wear them. Basic crew, turtleneck, V-neck, scoop neck, square neck, sweetheart, cowl, shawl collar, boat neck—and I’m probably forgetting some. If boiled down to their bare essence, necklines have two dimensions: their breadth and their depth. The breadth can form a strong horizontal visual impression, and the depth a strong vertical impression. Viewed in this way, all necklines can be binned into one of four groups. In this part of the installment I’ll go through the four groups and outline the visual principles at hand, explain what types of figures they flatter, and include example photographs.

Broad, Shallow Necklines.

Broad, shallow necklines offer an entirely horizontal impression. This group includes boat necks and most cowls. The horizontal line widens the shoulders, and sweaters with these necklines tend to look great on bottom-heavy shapes.

Boat necks, like the ones pictured here on Sarah and Thea, are extremely flattering to smaller-busted shapes. They often have a bit of detail that draws the eye upward from the bust and nicely frames the collarbones, a lovely part of most women’s physique.

The shallowness of these necklines and the detail in the neckline drawing the eye upward often means that boat necks leave a lot of plain fabric over the bust. For smaller-busted shapes that’s great, but it is harder to make a boat neck flattering on a bustier shape. Cowl necks, like the one pictured here, are a great alternative:

Broad, shallow necklines like cowls are more versatile than boat necks. While they still look great on smaller-busted shapes, they can also be very flattering on bustier bottom-heavy shapes (and much more modest than the broad and deep necklines I’ll talk about below). The fold of fabric like on the sweater pictured above softens the impression of miles of stockinette over the bust, but the neckline still retains the widening properties of a broad, shallow neckline. The collarbones are still framed nicely, as well.

Broad, shallow necklines are great for bottom-heavy and proportional shapes, particularly those with smaller busts. You can tell if a neckline is broad and shallow if it is substantially wider than it is deep and does not dip close to the wearer’s cleavage.

Narrow, Shallow Necklines.

Both the classic crew neck and turtleneck fall into this category of neckline. These necklines basically offer no visual impression at all. They neither broaden nor narrow the shoulder area or torso. Accordingly, this group of necklines flatters only a small group of women: Largely proportional, smaller-busted shapes.

The advantage to this type of neckline is that it provides a maximal canvas for the knitwear designer to show off cables, lace patterns, colorwork, and the like. It requires very little in the way of adjusting a motif to accommodate shaping: All parts of a stitch motif are basically ended at the same time. This makes it a popular choice for heavily-patterned Aran sweaters, complicated Fair Isle, and so forth.

Turtlenecks flatter women with smaller busts (the fabric on a turtlenecked sweater goes in one continuous swath from hem to chin), proportional shapes (they are neither broadening nor narrowing), and long necks. Jess, pictured here, is a perfect example of a shape flattered by a turtleneck.

Crew necks, like the one pictured on Sarah below, can flatter a broader range of shapes in that they are the natural neckline for a yoked sweater. For this reason, some crew necks are very flattering on smaller-busted bottom-heavy shapes. However, the visual motifs of the yoke must be horizontal. Sarah is wearing a crew-necked sweater whose brightly colored and horizontal motif nicely widens her shoulders and balances her hips. (Note that in this case, it’s the colorwork doing the widening, not the neckline.)

As the easiest necklines to incorporate into a design, narrow, shallow necklines are much more common in knitting patterns than one might expect. If you’re not a small-busted proportional shape, the good news about narrow, shallow necklines is that they are mechanically the easiest to modify. We’ll talk more about modification later in this installment.

Broad, Deep Necklines.

Wide V-necks and scoops, square necklines, and sweetheart necklines are all great examples of the third group: Necklines that are both broad and deep. They offer a balanced visual impression that is both horizontal and vertical, making them a fantastic choice for bustier bottom-heavy and proportional shapes (depending on how that breadth is balanced out on the hem of the garment).

Wide V-necks and scoop necklines are very similar, and a larger bust is pretty necessary for these necklines to be flattering. This is particularly true if the sweater is fitted—a fitted deep scoop like the one Diana is wearing below begs for something to fill it out. If you’re leery of showing too much skin, wearing a camisole beneath a sweater with this neckline allows for both modesty and the flattering effect of breaking the bust up visually.

Sweetheart necklines look great on busty bottom-heavy and proportional figures, but can also look good on those with a smaller bust if they’re well-fitted. Below, Jess wears a top with a sweetheart neckline that is very flattering. The key thing to notice about a sweetheart neckline is that the widest point (and the focus of the horizontal visual element) lies well above the fullest part of the bust. This offers the flattery of breaking up the bust and widening the shoulders while at the same time drawing the eyes up toward the collarbones.

Square necklines are nice choices for many bottom-heavy and proportional shapes as, they widen the shoulders and break up the torso without looking awkward on a smaller bust. (We didn’t have any sweaters with a square neckline during our photo shoot day. Some nice examples include Mary Jane by Rachel Bishop and Sarah Johnson and Kirsten Kapur’s Wood Hollow Vest.)

Finally, it is possible for a neckline to appear both broad and deep without leaving the wearer’s torso exposed: A neckline is defined both by the skin it makes visible and by the decorative elements around it. As long as the neckline has a portion that is somewhat deep, a wide collar or decoration can exaggerate the whole neckline into a broad, deep shape. I’ll close out this group with two pictures illustrating how this can be done. In the first, Crystal is wearing a wide-collared cardigan unbuttoned slightly. (The cardigan is Bonne Marie Burns’s excellent Twist Cardigan.) The V shape of the neckline created with the top button open makes the neckline read as a deep neckline; the wide spread of the collar widens the shoulders without baring them.

The shape of my green top is similar: A wide horizontal line at the shoulders, coupled with a deeper notch below the chin, surrounded by an eye-catching block of patterned fabric. This has the same visual appearance as a wide, deep V like that of my sweater Arm Candy, without baring as much skin.

Narrow, Deep Necklines.

Narrow, deep necklines offer up a single visual element: a vertical line from the collarbones to the closure of the neckline. Most V-necks and many scoop necklines belong in this category, and they are great for anyone with an ample chest and broad shoulders. They break up the bust and torso while narrowing it at the same time. As such, they’re a great choice for top-heavy and proportional figures.

Deep V-necklines like those shown below on Danielle and Caro are great for anyone wanting to narrow their torso—in a proportional way for proportional shapes, or without balancing elements for top-heavy shapes. They will work on larger and smaller busts, provided they are worn with negative ease at the bust.

Narrow, deep necklines include cardigans intended to be worn open or whose visual elements at the collar continue down to the hem in some other way: These can be very flattering if you’d like to draw attention away from your stomach or narrow the appearance of your torso without exposing a lot of skin—good choices for top-heavy shapes of any kind, or proportional shapes with larger busts.

Other Considerations.

Although they aren’t strictly neckline issues, I thought I’d use this installment to mention some special considerations in the neck-shoulder area that you might want to keep in mind when choosing a pattern. One such consideration is the shape of your shoulders. Generally speaking, those of us with shoulders that are square and fairly well-defined are flattered by most any sweater pattern. Set-in sleeves and smooth fabric over the shoulders alike keep the definition of that shoulder line. I have very defined shoulders that are clearly visible when I wear Thea Colman’s Short Lucky, which is knit with no shoulder seams.

Those knitters with rounded shoulders need to take more care, however. A sweater that is yoked or in some other way drapes over the shoulders will emphasize that rounding. These knitters will be most flattered by sweaters with a structured, well-defined shoulder seam. (Note that using a three-needle bind-off rather than seaming the shoulders by mattress stitch will lessen the visual structure of that seam!)

In the two pictures below, we see Kathy in a structured-shoulder top and in the Hourglass sweater, a raglan pattern without top shoulder seams.

It is a little unfair to include the second picture as comparison since there are other unflattering elements at work here for Kathy (sleeve length, those raglan seams, and the lack of any strong visual element at the top of the sweater). But if you restrict your attention to just her shoulders and trace a line around the outline of her shoulders you can see that they’re nicely squared by the seams of the floral top and left round when she’s wearing Hourglass.

(Quick side note: Women with a rounded upper back have a similar consideration in that they should also avoid yoked sweaters and choose patterns with structured seams in the neckline and torso area for maximum flattery.)

Sweaters constructed with raglan seams offer another special consideration in the shoulder/neckline area. Generally speaking, those with ample busts are not flattered by raglan seams, which draw a visual triangle whose points are the center of the collarbone and the armpits. This visually broadens the line between the armpits, which typically falls somewhere around the bust.

On smaller-busted women like Sarah (particularly if the woman also has a bottom-heavy shape), raglan construction looks great because it broadens the right area:

On larger-busted women like Erin, raglan seams tend to make the bust appear even larger than it is, and out of balance with the rest of the wearer’s figure.

It’s once again a little unfair to include this picture since there are other unflattering elements going on (Erin has neither a small bust nor a long neck, and the sweater and its sleeves are too long for her). But again, if you restrict your attention to the seams only you’ll see that they basically form two arrows pointing at the widest part of Erin’s bust. While there may be cases where this is what a busty knitter wants, generally speaking larger busts are flattered by a more subtle approach.

Modifying That Neckline.

A guiding principle when considering a neckline is that broad/narrow and deep/shallow are relative terms. They refer to how a sweater’s neckline falls on your specific body. When starting a pattern, it is a good idea to look carefully at the pattern’s schematic and compare it to the list of measurements you took after reading Installment 4. Broad necklines will stretch the lion’s share of the cross-chest measurement (and boat necks should be within 1”/2.5cm of it). Deep necklines should be within 2”/5cm of your longer cleavage depth (which you can tell by subtracting the length from hem to the start of the neck shaping from the overall length of the sweater).

When you examine a pattern schematic and compare it to your own measurements, you’re likely to want to make a few modifications to ensure that the sweater fits you perfectly. Let’s examine the steps one would need to take to alter the depth and width of an existing neckline in turn.

Altering Depth.

Changing the depth of a neckline without altering the width can be a fairly simple calculation. If the modification you want to make simply lengthens without changing the shaping (say, adding a few inches of depth to a crew neck to make it a scoop), you simply begin the neck shaping closer to the hem of the sweater. To make a neckline less deep, read the pattern closely. In many patterns, the sides of the sweater are worked straight after finishing the neck shaping. If this is the case, you can simply begin the shaping farther from the hem of the sweater than specified in the pattern.

Sometimes, you will want to alter the shaping of a neckline when you are lengthening or shortening it. One common calculation is changing the rate of decreases in a neckline to ensure that the neckline is shorter or longer. In this case, divide the total number of inches you’d like the neckline to span by the number of stitches to be decreased. Multiply the resulting number by your row gauge to calculate the number of rows in between each decrease. Round this number down if necessary.

Here’s an example: A V-neck sweater has a neckline depth of 5”/13cm, decreases 10 stitches per side, and has a row gauge of 8 rows to the inch/2.5cm. My torso is significantly longer than the pattern specifies, and I would like the neckline to span 8”/20cm instead. Working in Imperial measurements for the moment, I divide the number of inches I’d like the neckline to span (8) by the number of stitches to be decreased (10): I must decrease one stitch every 0.8”. I multiply that by my row gauge (8) and get one stitch decreased every 6.4 rows. Since I can always work straight after finishing the decreases, I round that number down to every 6 rows.

This kind of calculation works great for lengthening or shortening a V-neck, and with a bit of modification works great for scoop necks as well (you’ll want to ensure you work a scoop neck straight for some time after knitting the curve of the neckline, so don’t include those “straight” inches/cm in the total neckline depth in the above calculation).

If you want to make different kinds of alterations to the shape of a neckline—for example changing a square to a scoop, or a V to a sweetheart—drawing the front of the sweater from armholes to shoulders on knitters’ graph paper is probably the easiest solution. Note the number of stitches in each row of the pattern as written and draw the original neckline on the graph paper. Then, in another color, chart out your desired neckline (ensuring that you end with the correct number of shoulder stitches). You can now translate your drawing on the paper to line-by-line instructions for the new neckline.

Altering Width.

Changing the width of a neckline can get a bit more complicated than altering the length, but it is still very doable for most sweaters. First, calculate how many stitches you want to add or subtract from the existing shoulder stitches by measuring where you’d like the neckline to fall (this is often easily calculated from your cross-chest measurement).

To subtract stitches from the shoulders or widen the neckline, you must add extra decreases to the existing instructions. This might or might not cause you to have to recalculate the rate of decrease, as specified above. If you add the decreases mostly at the bottom of the neckline, your neckline will take on more of a square or scoop shape. If you add decreases just at the top, you will get a neckline somewhat like that of the green shirt I wear in the “broad, deep necklines” section of this installment. If you add the decreases evenly through, you will get a smooth diagonal line (like a V-neck).

To add stitches to the shoulders or narrow the neckline, you must subtract some decreases from the existing instructions. For a V-neck, simply recalculate the rate of decreases as specified above. For scoop necklines, remove them evenly from the bind-off portion of the neck and the curved sides of the neckline, keeping all alterations near the bottom of the neck. For more complicated necklines, I recommend drawing the torso of your sweater as written on knitters’ graph paper and then drawing your desired shape, as described above.

Altering Both.

Some neckline alterations might be a simple combination of the previous calculations: To narrow and shorten a V-neck, simply perform the calculation described in “altering depth” using the desired number of decreases instead of the number specified in the pattern.

However, for many major neckline re-calculations, drawing the desired neckline visually on knitters’ graph paper is the easiest way. (At least if you’re making the modification only for your own version of the pattern!)

When the sweater is patterned.

Altering the neckline of a patterned sweater can get a little tricky but follows the same principles outlined above. Simple stitch patterns like ribbing or a pattern with a small repeat don’t really affect calculations at all. For more complicated lace patterns, cables, or colorwork, consider how difficult it is to “break up” a repeat via shaping: Whether the straight portion of a neckline can easily be worked on a partial repeat (like most colorwork, for example) or if you need to have the entire motif to make sense (e.g., a cable). If a partial repeat is easy, perform modifications as described above. If it is difficult to break up the motif, consider length changes that simply move all existing shaping up or down and width changes that take away or add a multiple of the number of stitches in the motif.

And remember: When in doubt, draw it out. This is far easier to do than most knitters believe, and very reliable.

What’s Up Next.

Necklines can have a dramatic effect on whether a particular pattern flatters your shape, and they’re easier to modify than one might think. In the next installment we’ll provide a similar in-the-weeds look at sleeves.

I feel passionately that you should have a closet full of hand-knits that you’re proud to wear wherever you go. Helping you understand what your own shape is and how you can choose knitting patterns that will make you look your best are the reasons I’m writing this tutorial series. I hope you’re enjoying them!

To purchase a PDF version of this installment (US$2.00), or the entire series (US$10.00): Buy this Buy all