606 Flowing Rib Cardigan - Knitting Pattern for Women in Valley Yarns Deerfield

606 Flowing Rib Cardigan – Knitting Pattern for Women by Kirsten Hipsky

The 606 Flowing Rib Cardigan is a women's knitting pattern designed by Kirsten Hipsky and worked in Valley Yarns Deerfield, a luxurious DK-weight yarn blended from 80% Baby Alpaca and 20% Silk. The result is a garment with exceptional drape and a soft, fluid hand that suits the flowing, ribbed aesthetic of the design perfectly. This is an intermediate-level pattern available as a downloadable PDF, offering seven finished sizes ranging from 36 to 60 inches in finished bust circumference, with the sample shown in size 40 inches.

What Is Being Made

This pattern produces a women's ribbed cardigan with a distinctive one-piece construction that integrates the sleeves directly into the body. The defining design feature is a Carriage Rib stitch pattern — described in the pattern as a Mistake Rib variation with more knit stitches than purl stitches — that flows continuously over the shoulders and down the sleeves. The collar is worked as part of the seamless front construction and joined to the back yoke, giving the finished garment a polished, structured silhouette with a beautifully draped, ribbed texture throughout.

Construction Techniques

• Bottom-up construction: The fronts and body are begun at the lower cast-on edge and worked upward toward the underarm, establishing the full length of the cardigan before sleeve shaping begins.
• Worked flat: All pieces are knitted back and forth in rows rather than in the round, distinguishing right-side and wrong-side rows throughout.
• Seamed finishing: The construction is seamed, meaning individual sections are joined after knitting to complete the garment.
• Sideways sleeve integration: One of the most notable techniques in this pattern is that the sleeves are not worked separately and sewn in. Instead, stitches are cast on at the end of wrong-side rows during the sleeve shaping phase, building the sleeve fabric horizontally and simultaneously with the body. This creates a seamless flow of the rib pattern from body to sleeve.
• Graduated sleeve cast-ons: The sleeve shaping uses a stepped cast-on method — casting on 8 stitches at the end of every wrong-side row a specified number of times, then casting on 4 stitches at the end of every wrong-side row — with the exact numbers varying by size to achieve a total of 80 sleeve stitches across all sizes.
• Short-row collar shaping: The collar is shaped by working across only a subset of stitches on a wrong-side row, then turning and working back and forth on those stitches alone for a defined length before placing them on a holder. This creates the shaped collar that is later joined to the back yoke.
• Stitch holders and pick-up: Held stitches from the left front collar are slipped onto the needle and combined with stitches picked up along the collar edge and right front stitches to form the back yoke and complete the one-piece shoulder construction.

Stitches Used

• Carriage Rib (the primary stitch pattern): A multiple of 4 stitches plus 1, this stitch is worked identically on every row: *K3, p1; repeat from * to last stitch, k1. Because both right-side and wrong-side rows are worked the same way, the pattern is straightforward to memorize and produces a subtly textured, vertically flowing rib. On the Right Front, the row begins K1, *p1, k3; repeat from * to mirror the Left Front correctly.
• Knit (k): The dominant stitch throughout the pattern, forming the raised columns of the rib.
• Purl (p): Used as the recessed single stitch between knit columns to define the rib structure.
• Bind off (BO) and cast on (CO): Both standard techniques are used extensively, with cast-ons during sleeve shaping being a key structural element.

Materials

• Yarn: Valley Yarns Deerfield — 80% Baby Alpaca / 20% Silk,