Difficulty: beginner Skill: construction basic 4 min read

What it is

Top-down sweater construction lets the knitter shape the yoke first and often try the garment on during the process. Raglan, round yoke and drop shoulder styles can all be worked top down.

How Ruke patterns use it

Top-down construction is a major Ruke garment structure. The corpus repeatedly contains yoke, body, sleeve, hem and cuff sections, showing the typical flow from neck or yoke toward the lower edges.

Examples

Yoke (from neck to armpit) appears in 18 parsed pattern structures.
Yoga Summer Sweater is worked from the top down with raglan shaping and later separates into body and sleeves.

When to use it

Use it when explaining sweaters worked from the neckline down toward body hem and cuffs.

What to check

Check yoke depth, try-on points, sleeve separation, body length and whether increases match the selected size.