Raglan planner

Where does every stitch of my raglan go?

Plan a raglan sweater or cardigan from your gauge and measurements — or from a standard size. You get the neck cast-on and how it splits between back, front, sleeves and raglan lines, how many increases each part needs, the stitch count at every stage, a diagram with your numbers on it, and a written plan to tick off as you knit.

Worked example

A top-down raglan pullover with a 100 cm chest at 22 stitches and 30 rows to 10 cm: cast on 96 stitches (back 32, sleeves 14, front 32, and 4 raglan stitches), increase to 288, then split into a 92-stitch front and back and 52-stitch sleeves.

How it works

The neck cast-on comes from the neck opening and your stitch gauge. After the raglan-line stitches, each sleeve takes about 15% of what's left and the front and back share the rest equally.

At the underarm, the body has to reach your chest measurement and each sleeve your upper arm, with a few stitches cast on under each arm. Each increase round adds 2 stitches at every raglan line. Body and sleeves usually need different numbers, so the extra increases are worked on the body (or the sleeves) only, after the shared ones.

The increases are spread over the yoke depth, every other round. If the yoke is too short for that, the first increases are worked on consecutive rounds.

Bottom-up is the same garment in reverse: the stitch counts at every stage match. On a V-neck, a neck decrease can move one row to land on a right-side row, so one stage may differ by 2 stitches. Knitted in pieces, every piece gets the same number of raglan rows, so the seams line up.

Every count is rounded to whole stitches, so the finished measurements are listed beside the ones you asked for. Short rows (to raise the back neck or lower the front) don't change any count.

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