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For about half of the "Magnificent 7 Guinea Pigs" group, one of the big fit issues was how to fit a sweater for a generous bust without it becoming a gunny sack.

OK, I have basically no background in the generous bust department.  But we’ve all been giving it our best shot, and successfully, too!  Here’s one more of our guinea pigs, and here’s how nicely her sweater fits:

How’s that for a work of art?  How’s that for no extra big wad of fabric under the arm, huh??

Here’s the short-row bust dart section that saves the day!

We did have some trouble deciding just how big to make the bust darts, and where to place them.  I started with an article out of Knitty, which suggests the following:

The vertical length of this section depends on your cup size. Estimate about 0.75 to 1 inch for a C cup, and add 0.75 to 1 inch for each full increment (to D, E, etc.).

The short rows start … a couple of inches below the [underarm]…

The first pair of short rows should end about 1 inch shy of the side seams. The last pair should end about 1 inch outside the bust point.

My opinion as of right now is this:

Thumbs up on where the short rows should start (about 2 inches below the underarm shaping, +/- an inch).

Thumbs up on how long the bust dart should be:  starting an inch from the side seam, and ending an inch from the bust point.  This dimension is pretty easy to measure.

Not so sure about the cup size thing, though… I don’t believe a one-size-fits-all rule of thumb works here.

We did things a little differently, after one of the other knitters in the group had a sort of epiphany:  she figured out how to measure the size of the short-row section.  It may seem obvious once you see these next pictures, but believe me, it wasn’t obvious at all until Mary said, in effect, "Eureka!"

Basically, the length of the short-row section needs to be the difference between these two measurements:

1. the length the fabric needs to be to go over the fullest part of the bust, and
2. the length the fabric needs to be to go over the part with no bust.

Almost obvious, once you look at this picture:  the distance over the bust is of course longer than the distance down the side, and it’s this difference that needs to be accommodated with the short rows.

But the great thing about it is, you can measure this distance instead of guesstimating!  And that’s the way to figure out how long the bust dart section should be.

There’s one more very important factor to think about, though — and this is where the Knitty rule of thumb really falls flat, as it were, heh heh.

Notice I said it’s the difference in the lengths of the fabric needed – which means, not necessarily the actual body measurements — it means the body measurements with ease included.

The less fitted your sweater is, the less of a "pocket" you’re gonna need for the girls, right?

For example, if this sweater were looser, the difference in fabric needed to go over the bust would be less.  Or, think about it this way:  if the sweater is baggy enough, it won’t need any kind of bust shaping.

The cup-size system doesn’t include any indication of how much ease is involved, or how fitted of a sweater they are envisioning — and we all know there’s a world of difference between one person’s idea of "average fit" and another’s.

So, in the end, you will still have to make some kind of judgment call as to how much additional fabric you’re going to need for your own particular bust, and your amount of ease.  For this particular sweater, we chose to make the short row section about an inch longer than the cup-size estimation indicated, as it is a rather fitted style.

And once you know those two dimensions (length of the short row section, and length of the bust dart), the actual nuts & bolts of calculating the short rows becomes a matter of math.

Convert the required length of the SR section to rows; convert the required length of the dart itself to sts.

Divide the number of rows by the number of sts to figure out how many sts shorter each subsequent short row will be.  There is one catch:  start by subtracting 2 from the number of rows you have to work with, because you’ll need them for starting and finishing the short row section.

There’s one more GP who kind of fell behind in the project, and we’re still waiting to see how things work out with hers – but after this, I’m pretty confident we’ll have another great-fitting sweater!