Madigan, Revised

When we last we spoke of my Madigan pullover, I was thoroughly disappointed with how the sweater had turned out. I just didn’t like the way that it looked on me, primarily because I wasn’t a fan of the cap sleeves.

As I kept looking at the photos of the sweater, I realized there were other, less obvious aspects of the sweater that I didn’t like. I hated the welted detail at the hip and it seemed a touch too long through the body. Add in the cap sleeves, which required a longer-sleeved tee underneath, and the one feature of the pullover that I really liked–the welted cowl neck–was getting kind of lost in the visual shuffle.

When I initially finished this sweater, I was ready to just rip the whole thing out, but some encouraging blog comments got me to slow down and think about how I could save it. My friend Abby suggested 3/4 sleeves, which I decided to go ahead and add. I also ripped out the welted hem and replaced it with 2″ of 2×2 ribbing, shortening the body of the sweater by ~1″. The ribbing also eliminates the weird rippling I was previously getting around the bottom of the welted hem.

The end result is more wearable because it doesn’t require any creative layering. But even more than that, the revised sweater is a more streamlined look that puts all of the focus on the cowl neck–I’ve basically eliminated anything that was previously a visual distraction from the cowl. People talk a lot about the importance of proportions, which I always find difficult to understand, but I think the new version of the sweater works because of the issue of proportions. The length of the sleeves and the slightly shorter length just look better on my body.

Anyway, I’m really happy with how this sweater ultimately turned out and even happier that I didn’t just ditch the whole project. The changes were really easy to make since the sweater is knit top-down in the round. I think it took me four or five evenings to add the sleeves and the ribbing. That’s not very much time at all to take a project from being a loser to being one of the best pullovers I’ve made!