This paper introduces the foundations of a new mechanical level of detail method dedicated to knitted fabric simulation. This method consists as a reduction of the knitted cloth parameters number, decreasing the configurations space dimension of the studied cloth. We stress the importance of the choice of an efficient parameters reduction function in order to make the method usable. The consequences of this reduction on the underlying equations of motion are then detailed. Finally, we present some numerical results and animation snapshots that illustrate the advantages of this new level of detail scheme.