How long does it take to knit a sweater

The usual range, and why it is so wide

Published estimates overlap but do not agree on the edges. Knitty Stitchy says most knitters fall somewhere between 20 and 80 hours for a sweater, with some finishing in under 15 hours and others spending 100 hours or more, and splits it as roughly 40 to 80 hours for beginners and 20 to 40 hours for advanced knitters. Nimble Needles gives a wider band of as little as 10 hours to as much as 100. Mary Maxim tells knitters to expect at least 40 hours for an adult cardigan.

At the quick end, NobleKnits breaks down a women's cardigan in worsted weight stockinette: 4 to 6 hours for the back, 3 hours for each front, 4 hours for each sleeve and 2 hours of finishing, about 22 hours in all. That is a simple garment in a medium yarn, which is why it sits near the bottom of the range.

Nimble Needles names the four things that move the number: the size of the sweater, your gauge, the complexity of the pattern and your own knitting speed. Change any one of them and the total can double.

Estimate your own time from stitch count

The most useful estimate is a sum: total stitches divided by your stitches per minute. Nimble Needles puts a simple bottom-up raglan in size M at roughly 70,000 stitches. Its author, an advanced knitter, manages about 60 stitches per minute in plain stockinette, which works out at about 19.4 hours. It describes 20 to 30 stitches per minute as typical for an average intermediate knitter, and at 30 the same sweater takes about 38.8 hours.

At 20 stitches per minute, 70,000 stitches is 3,500 minutes, or a little over 58 hours. Knitty Stitchy runs a similar example: a 75,000 stitch sweater at 30 stitches a minute is about 2,500 minutes, just over 41 hours.

Your own speed is the number that matters, and Mary Maxim suggests the simplest way to find it: knit a swatch in the same yarn and stitch pattern as the sweater and measure how many stitches and rows you get through in an hour. Use the real stitch pattern rather than plain stockinette if the sweater has cables or colorwork, divide the pattern's approximate stitch count by your rate, and then add time for finishing.

Yarn weight changes everything

The Craft Yarn Council's standard yarn weight system gives typical stockinette gauges over 4 inches: 12 to 15 stitches for bulky, 16 to 20 for medium or worsted, 21 to 24 for light or DK, and 27 to 32 for super fine, the fingering and sock category. Every row of a fingering weight sweater therefore has about one and a third to two times the stitches of the same row in worsted, and there are more rows to knit as well.

Knitty Stitchy's figures show how far that stretches the total. It puts bulky and super bulky sweaters at around 10 to 20 hours, and says that in lace weight even the simplest design can pass 100 hours.

Pattern matters in the same way. The Nimble Needles author who knits 60 stitches a minute in stockinette drops to 10 stitches a minute or fewer on complex intarsia. A colorwork yoke can take as long as the plain body below it.

From hours to weeks on the calendar

Knitting hours and calendar time are different measures. Nimble Needles suggests about two weeks for an advanced knitter and a full month of knitting two hours every day for someone at average speed. Mary Maxim says a fast knitter can finish an adult cardigan in as little as two weeks, while others take weeks or even months.

The arithmetic is simple and a little sobering. A 40 hour sweater knitted for an hour each evening takes 40 evenings, close to six weeks. At half an hour a day it is 80 days, closer to three months. Knitty Stitchy says a dedicated knitter can finish a bulky, simple sweater in a week with a few hours a day, and that a beginner's first sweater might take a month.

Few knitters work on one project at a time, so a sweater's real elapsed time also includes the weeks it spent waiting while socks, a hat or a gift took over. That is normal, but it is worth counting when you plan.

Common mistakes when estimating knitting time

Timing yourself on the easy part. A rate measured on stockinette will be far too optimistic for cables, lace or colorwork, as the drop from 60 to 10 stitches a minute reported by Nimble Needles shows.

Forgetting finishing. Seaming, picking up bands, sewing buttons and weaving in ends all take time. NobleKnits allows 2 hours of finishing even for a simple cardigan.

Using someone else's speed. The speeds Nimble Needles reports run from 20 to 60 stitches a minute. Measure your own before you promise a sweater for a birthday.

Not keeping a record. The best estimate for your next sweater is how long your last one really took, from cast-on to bind-off. Yarnline shows each project as a bar running from cast-on day to today, and when you bind off, the finished card records the cast-on and bind-off dates and the number of days it took, so the next estimate can start from your own history rather than a guess.

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