Cirrus Top in Valley Yarns Southampton - 836 - Downloadable PDF

Cirrus Top in Valley Yarns Southampton – Pattern #836 by Julie Turjoman

The Cirrus Top is a beautifully airy, A-line knitted top designed by Julie Turjoman and published as pattern #836. It is worked in Valley Yarns Southampton, a luxurious DK-weight yarn spun from a fine blend of 72% Kid Mohair and 28% Mulberry Silk. The result is a nearly weightless fabric with a delicate drape and exceptional softness against the skin, making the Cirrus Top an ideal layering piece worn over a camisole. This downloadable PDF pattern is rated beginner difficulty, making it an accessible project for knitters who are just moving beyond the basics while still producing a refined, elegant garment.

What Is Being Made

The finished garment is a lightweight, A-line silhouette top with a shaped neckline and sleeves picked up directly from the body. Its gently flared A-line shape skims the body gracefully, and the mohair-silk fabric gives it an ethereal, cloud-like quality that layers effortlessly over wardrobe basics. The pattern is offered in a generous range of sizes, with finished bust measurements spanning 34, 37¼, 40½, 46¾, 50, 53¼, 56½, and 60½ inches. The sample shown in the pattern is knitted in Size 37¼".

Construction and Techniques

The Cirrus Top uses a combination of construction methods that give knitters a well-rounded experience of garment making:

• Bottom-up construction: The garment begins at the hem and is worked upward toward the shoulders, a classic approach that allows knitters to try on the piece as they go and adjust length easily.
• Worked in the round: The body is knitted in the round from the cast-on edge up to the underarm, creating a seamless tube and eliminating the need for side seams on the lower body.
• Worked flat: After dividing at the underarm, the Front and Back are each worked separately back and forth in rows, which introduces knitters to the transition between circular and flat knitting within a single project.
• Seamed finishing: The pattern is classified as a seamed construction, meaning some assembly is required to join the finished pieces together.
• Sleeve pickup: Rather than knitting the sleeves separately and seaming them in, the sleeves are picked up directly from the armhole edge of the body — a technique that creates a tidy join and is a valuable skill for any garment knitter to learn.
• Neck shaping: The neckline is shaped by binding off stitches at center front and then working each Front shoulder separately, with decreases worked at the neck edge over several right-side rows to create a smooth, tapered neckline.
• Stitch holders and waste yarn: Shoulder stitches are placed on holders or waste yarn for later joining, a common technique in top-down and bottom-up garment construction alike.

Stitches Used

The primary stitch pattern throughout the Cirrus Top is Stockinette stitch, worked both in the round (knitting every round) and flat (alternating knit right-side rows with purl wrong-side rows). The gauge for this pattern is 16 stitches and 20 rounds over 4 inches in Stockinette stitch. The pattern also references Reverse Stockinette stitch in its abbreviation list. Key shaping techniques include:

• K2tog (knit two together) — a right-leaning decrease used in shaping
• SSK (slip, slip, knit) — a left-leaning decrease that mirrors K2tog for balanced shaping
• Bind-off sequences at the underarm and neck for clean, structured edges

Materials

The recommended yarn is Valley Yarns Southampton, a DK-weight yarn sold in 25g skeins of approximately 230 yards each. The fiber content — 72% Kid Mohair and 28% Mulberry Silk — gives the yarn its signature halo, luminous sheen, and featherlight handle. Kid Mohair is prized for its incredibly fine, soft fibers that bloom into a gentle haze