This sweater is a top-down, fitted cardigan styled after the practical but flattering fashions of the 1940s and 50s. With its small vintage details like seed-stitch yoke, slightly puffed sleeves, and demure cable framing the button band, it seems to me like the kind of sweater a college co-ed might have worn to class. So I named it after Radcliffe, the women’s college of Harvard University which formally merged with Harvard in 1977. When I graduated in 1999, mine was the last class of women who received diplomas from both Harvard and Radcliffe.

A unique construction allows the customizability of top-down construction with the look of set-in sleeves. Because it is knit top-down, the pattern is easily adapted to sizes larger and smaller than those I have written up.