Fashioned goods are garments which, while being knit on the machine, are made the proper shape to fit the wearer.

If the garment to be fashioned is a sweater, the fashioning or shaping to be done is the sleeve, the neck opening, the collar, and at times in the better class of sweaters, the arm holes are narrowed back from the lower part to the shoulder in order to shorten the shoulder length, thereby insuring a better fit. When making underwear not only the sleeves have to be shaped but the legs of the drawers are shaped also. In the ladies’ high class fashioned underwear and tights the bust and hips are shaped. Much of this class of work, with the exception of hosiery, is made on the hand machines and involves much more labor, time and skill, than where the work is knit in a straight piece and made the proper shape by other means after being taken off the machine.

There are three advantages in fashioning the garments in the knitting operation. First, there is a saving in material as there is no material cut off in order to get the shape. This saving, however, would pay but a small part of the extra labor involved. Second, fashioned goods make up into better looking and as a rule better fitting garments than cut goods. Third, on account of the edges being selvage, not cut and raw, it is possible to join two edges so the place of joining will look much like a wale in the fabric, thereby avoiding the unsightly seams of the cut garment.

In fashioning of this character it is customary to set the machine up and start at the widest part of the garment, if possible, so that in getting the required shape the fabric will be made narrower instead of wider, though this is not essential, as it is practical to widen the fabric as well as to make it narrower.

The Narrowing Comb

The letter a in Fig. 42 shows the instrument used for narrowing by hand. It is called a decker or narrowing comb. It will be noted that it consists of long slim points clamped in a handle, with an eye in the free end of each point. There may be any desired number of points clamped in the handle, the limit being only the width of the clamp, but the usual number for this work is from three to five. These points must be set at a distance from one another to correspond to the cut of the machine on which they are to be used; that is, if the needle plates are cut for six needles to one inch the spacing of the decker points must be the same. I might add that these deckers are sometimes made by stamping the whole decker, points and all, out of sheet steel, and sometimes by soldering the round points on to a handle.

Perhaps the best way to explain the use of this decker is to give directions for making a sleeve. First we must have a set up comb, shown in Fig. 43, the use of which will be understood as we proceed. Then we must have weights with which to hold the work down on the needles, for, as stated before, in the operation of knitting there must always be means provided to pull the fabric onto and away from the needles. These weights are simply a stand made from a short iron rod about three-sixteenths inch in diameter and about seven to eight inches long, with a hook turned on one end, a small round iron disc attached to the other, and a number of round iron weights slotted to the center to allow the operator to slip them on or off the stand to secure the desired pull. In fact, the stand and weights are a duplicate of the stand and weights we see hanging on the end of the beam of a common platform scale.

To make the sleeve we would put up the required number of needles for the full width of the sleeve, let us say 100, and set the locks for half cardigan stitch. We would then draw the yarn through the yarn guide and down through the throat between the needle plates. Then we would move the carriage across the machine to the opposite side, and we should find that each needle had caught the yarn and drawn it back and forth across the throat. We would now take our set up comb, illustrated in Fig. 43, and push the points which project at the top up through the throat, from underneath, until the upper ends are above the yarn, which has been drawn back and forth across the throat, after which we push the wire, shown just above the comb, through the eyes in the end of the points, as indicated by the dotted line. Now we can pull the comb down on to the yarn and the wire will rest on it. We then hang a weight in the center hole at the bottom and are ready to proceed with the knitting.

Operation of Narrowing

The first thing we would do after hanging on our weights would be to rack over one needle to give that end of the sleeve a smooth selvage finish. We would now put on five rounds, after which we would begin to narrow. Stopping the carriage on the left side of the machine, we would take the decker and place the hooks of the three end needles, in the back plate on the right, in the eyes of the three points of the decker, draw the needles up until the stitch dropped down below the latch, then push them down to their first position. We find that the stitches have dropped off over the end and free of the needle on to our decker. We now carry the stitches in toward the center one needle, hook on to these three needles and pull them up through the stitches, being careful not to pull them up so far that the stitches will drop down below the latches. After this has been done we have the end needle without a stitch and therefore pull it down where it is out of operation.

We go through this same performance on the front needle plate, right side, then move the carriage over to the right and do the same with the left side. It is obvious that when we have finished we shall have put four needles out of operation, or what would count as two in the width of the garment. We would repeat this after every five rounds for twenty-five rounds, so at this point our sleeve would be ten needles narrower than when we started, although we would have put out of operation twenty needles in narrowing. It is customary to reckon only with the needles of one plate, as the wales of one side only are counted in the width of a rib fabric.

Shaping a garment in this manner leaves a selvage edge for joining, consequently when the garment is finished the seams, when properly put together, are small with an appearance much like a wale in the fabric. They also have the same stretch or elasticity as the fabric.

Fig. 44 is an outline of approximately the shape the sleeve should be when finished and shows the direction of the wales and the places where the ones doubled up terminate. This is shown on one side and edge only, although the other side and edge would be the same.

It is understood, of course, that the sleeve is shown opened up flat, and in being put on a garment would be doubled over and the edges joined on the underside of the arm. To reduce the size from the forearm to the wrist or cuff it is usual, in sweaters, to depend on the change to the plain rib stitch, for as explained previously the plain rib will come out much narrower than the half or full cardigan with the same number of needles and the same yarn. In underwear and theatrical tights it is customary to fashion down the forearm to the cuff.

Many knitters consider it good practice to reverse this formula in fashioning; that is, to start at the cuff in order to have the rack stitch on the end of the cuff to save the hand finishing. In this event the narrowing operation as described would be reversed, or a widening operation.

This is done by pulling up the three end needles and pushing them down until the stitches drop off on to the decker, as in narrowing, but instead of setting these stitches in towards the center we would push up another needle and set them out one. This would leave the fourth needle without a stitch, so we would pick up the previous stitch, which had been cast off of what is now the fifth needle and raise it up and hook it over the fourth. This is done with one point of the decker. After having done this on both plates and on both sides of the sleeve, while we would have pushed four needles up into operation, we would have widened only two.

Where it is not considered an advantage to have the widening stitches show, this operation may be expedited quite a little by using the hook shown at b in Fig. 42, which is a convenient size to handle, about one-eighth inch in diameter by 6 inches long. By this method we push up into operation the new needle and simply catch with the hook the previous stitch cast off of the end needle and hook it on to the new needle on the four corners as before described. It is best to do this one needle at a time with a course between, taking the one on the plate that contains the inside needle.