Patent ID: 6889530

Claim:
A method for forming gussets in knitwear comprising a body and right and left sleeves joined together by using a flat knitting machine comprising at least a pair of front and back needle beds extending laterally and arranged opposite to each other in a longitudinal direction to define a needle bed gap therebetween, each of which has a large number of needles and at least either of which can be racked laterally to receive and transfer loop between the needle beds, wherein the right and left sleeves and the body are arranged in parallel on the flat knitting machine and are each knitted in the form of a tubular body from cuffs of the sleeves and a hem of the body up to underarms and, then, the sleeves and the body are joined together, while courses of the sleeves knitted and courses of the body knitted are formed by feeding a yarn to needles holding loops of the sleeves and loops of the body in such a circular pattern that the sleeves and the body can be joined into a single large tubular body and also the tubular body is reduced in diameter from the underarms toward the shoulders to form armholes, in the process of which the gussets are formed in underarm portions of the knitwear, the method comprising: (a) the step that the body and the sleeves are knitted at a ratio of the number of courses of the body knitted to the number of courses of the sleeves knitted of two to one or at a ratio higher in proportion of the number of courses of the body knitted than the ratio of the number of courses of the body knitted to the number of courses of the sleeves knitted of two to one, and also a knitting width of the body is narrowed gradually from lower ends of the armholes toward the shoulder portions while the loops of the body at lateral ends thereof and the loops of the sleeves at lateral ends thereof are overlapped with each other to join together the body and the sleeves, and (b) the step that subsequently to the step (a), the body and the sleeves are knitted at a ratio of the number of courses of the body knitted to the number of courses of the sleeves knitted of one to one or at a ratio higher in proportion of the number of courses of the sleeves knitted than the ratio of the number of courses of the body knitted to the number of courses of the sleeves knitted of one to one.