How to Begin
As the front is essentially half of the back, the calculations will for the most part have been completed.
Begin with 90% of your bust measurement divided by two. Be sure this number is divisible by 4 for K2P2 ribbing.
On the last front row of the ribbing evenly increase stitches to get to the stitch count needed for half of the bust line.
Your cable designs should be the same as used for the back. Determine the centre and ensure the components are centred onto your front. When you begin the second front piece be sure the design is either exactly the same or a mirror image, which ever is most appropriate.
Armhole
Knit in pattern until the front reaches the armhole. This is your “H” measurement. Now follow the armhole to be exactly what you knit for the back.
A word of caution here. Depending on where you want your neckline to start, it’s possible you will be decreasing stitches at the armhole at the same time as the neckline decreases.
Neckline
For this sweater we are doing a round neck. A round neck has a horizontal section followed by a gradual slope up towards the shoulder.
To begin with we need to know how many stitches there will be at the shoulder. This is exact the same as the back, over those cast off sections. Then account for the stitches to complete the underarm. The remaining stitches will be the stitches to remove at the neckline.
For me I had 64 stitches minus 13 for the arm hole. I have 51 stitches and I need 26 stitches for my shoulder. This gives me 25 stitches to eliminate within the neckline.
Now we need to measure the neckline to the shoulder and multiply by your row gauge. This gives us the number of rows in which to cast off neckline stitches.
The gradual portion is generally done over 2/3rds the rows where only 1 stitch is removed. The base of the neckline will have more stitches eliminated.
My neckline to shoulder is 4.25 inches. My row gauge is 7.05. This means I will remove 25 stitches in 29.96 rows. Decreases are completed on one side only so half my row count. For me, that is 15, 2/3rds of 15 is 9.9 or 10 stitches. I have 15 stitches to remove at the base of the neckline. If I am casting off 1 stitch per row at the top of the neck, this uses 10 of the 15 rows. I now have 5 rows in which to eliminate 15 stitches (25-10). 15 divided by 5 is three. I will therefore cast off 3 stitches 5 times to shape the base of the neckline and 1 stitch 10 times to shape the top of the neckline.
Shaping the Shoulder
Please note you will be doing neckline and shoulder shaping at the same time. Complete your shoulder shaping identical to the back.
This will complete the left front. Repeat for the right front, but complete decreases on the wrong side to reverse the shaping.
Rinse and block the fronts .
Be sure to check out the video to accompany this lesson. You may also be interested in the video on how to knit the chart.
Once you select the download, head to the file icon on your device to find your download
