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Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but stick with me—sometimes it's better to seam a garment.
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Hear me out! While I do love the ease and lack of finishing inherent in seamless sweaters, there are times that I think it's better to have seams. For example, let's take my Kernmantle sweater that I'm knitting for the Cables Knit-along.
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This pattern is rather adventurous, and I'm learning a lot while I'm knitting it! You start with the back neck, then work strips for the shoulders. Then you join in the round and pick up stitches for the tops of the sleeves... it sounds intimidiating but it's actually pretty easy as you're doing it. And thanks to a long weekend, I was able to get a lot of progress made, so you can see I've finished my sleeve caps and am working on the body.
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The thing is, I'm a little bit worried about the sleeves being too big for my arms—not the worst problem to have, but I dislike having extra fabric under my arms (and why knit or crochet things if we can't have them fit exactly how we want?). I'm not really worried about it and we'll see how it all shakes out in the long run, but there's a part of me that almost wishes I had reworked the instructions to knit the sleeves separately to make them fit more how I like. Seamless garments are great for quick knitting (as in, you don't have to convince yourself to sit down and sew pieces together), but they can be a little trickier in terms of fine tuning the fit.
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Another place where seamless garment construction can fall down is when knitting print- or stripe-effect yarns, such as Berroco Millefiori®. If you were to knit this week's free pattern, Marley, in the round with Berroco Millefiori, you'd end up with very narrow stripes in the bottom of the body that transition into really wide stripes at the top of the body. Instead, by knitting the body in separate pieces, you have these lovely stripes that naturally get wider for the front and back yokes.
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Of course there are a lot of positives to knitting garments seamlessly, and it all comes down to your own personal preference!
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Which do you prefer, seamless knits or a more structured approach? We've got a poll going on Facebook, so let us know!
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Happy knitting,
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