DesigKnit

It’s taken a while to get photos, but the Mondrian Sweater is done!

The sleeves are a little bit long and slouchy, perhaps, but after the past couple of sweaters where I swear the sleeves shrunk by an inch with wear, I wanted to make sure that they had plenty of length. They’re a tiny bit baggy, but that just moves the sweater a little more toward slouch-around-the-house rather than a formal jacket style, and I can roll the cuffs if I want to eliminate some of that length. Since I mostly use sweaters as slouch-around-the-house garments, the looser fit will be fine with me!

I like how the color blocks in the back highlight the construction, though I’d have been a tad happier if the red/brown line were an inch and a half closer to center. (That’s the thing about bold, graphic designs – they just beg for a certain level of exactitude, which encourages my perfectionist side…)

I do like how the blocks of color play off of one another, though. The three red panels keep your eye moving in the back (especially interesting in this photo, where the red vase pulls your eye right outside of the sweater and into the background – that wasn’t done on purpose, but it worked out rather well), and the dark green does the same in the front. Interestingly, the dark brown “reads” as red in some lights (see the first photo), which makes kind of a cascading blocks effect sometimes, too.

I think the shoulder shaping does a nice job of keeping the neckline clean, and there’s plenty of room to move my arms. In a second version, I might make the neck cutout a little deeper, even, so that the back neck seam falls a little further down the spine. I like a collar that stands up my neck a bit, so it worked out well for me, but I think most people prefer a neckline that sits a little lower in the back. It’s a subtle detail and barely visible in the photos, but it’s something I noticed while blocking and might want to come back to in future, should I revisit this design.

The back seam between shoulder blades is a little short, and it binds just a little with certain motions. You can see that showing up in the fabric distortions in this photo:

It’s not uncomfortable to wear since the sweater has a lot of ease anyway, but if I were to do it over I’d add another increase wedge in the back panel to increase the width on that seam just a smidge. (And I would probably also reduce the overall ease by an inch or so as a result.) Incidentally, a longer back seam would put the vertical seam back where I wanted it, with the color blocks meeting slightly closer to center – a win all around.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with how this one came out…not bad for a first round with an odd geometry and an improvised design!