Seamless Guernsey Sweater

Here it is, a traditional seamless fisherman's sweater, with shoulder straps, underarm gussets and a monogram in the bottom right corner.  It is knitted in 5 ply Guernsey wool using the same cable and moss stitch pattern as I used for the cabled jacket described in a previous post Fitted Cabled Jacket. I wanted to knit it in the round with no seams to sew and no tight cast off edges.  All the stitches are threaded onto a contrasting colour yarns and picked up later when needed.

I used an excellent book for this project. "Knitting in the Old Way" by Pricilla A Gibson-Roberts and  Deborah Robson. It is a treasure trove of information containing plans for numerous styles of sweater construction, which can easily be adapted.


As always I began with some sample swatches in different Guernsey yarns. The best one was washed and lightly pressed and measures for tension over a 10 cm square. This is so important if you want to design your own patterns. Keep records of what you've done, needles size, yarns etc.

With the swatch tension and my son's measurements I could work how many stitches to cast on. Divide by 2 to get the number of stitches for the back and front. Then I used graph paper to draw the pattern row starting with a cable at the centre and working out towards the edges. This ensures that the pattern is placed symmetrically. I put a band of moss stitch at the edges to make the armholes and gusset smoother.

There are a few mistakes (I like to call them  idiosyncrasies) in the patterning in some places but I can't even find them now! Anyway, it adds character and shows that it was made by hand and not a machine.