Making modifications to a finished sweater

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had experience or knew if it would be possible to make modifications to a completed sweater.

I would like to decrease the length of the sleeves by about three to four inches. This particular sweater has a solid color until the elbow where there is a fair isle pattern. It was knit in the round from the bottom up.

I did not knit this particular sweater and don’t have the pattern so unseeing the sleeve and re knitting from the bottom up is not an option for me.

My question would be has anyone unraveled a bottom up sleeve and then re-knit a portion going in the opposite direction? Did it turn out well? Is there a obvious defect with the stitches going in the opposite direction?

Thank you for any or all help.
Ryan

Welcome to KH. I want to say sleeves can probably be shortened. Could you post a photo of one of the sleeves please. That would help immensely in helping you figure out how to do it.

Welcome to KH!
I’ve done this to shorten sleeves and once to shorten the body of a sweater. It works very nicely. If the fair isle pattern is in the area where you want to shorten, you might see if there is a row or two of a single color where you can make a cut but if not, you can still work with the stranded rows.
Here’s the tutorial I’ve used:

I just wanted to add that unravelling from the bottom up is very time consuming. Give it a try on an old swatch. You unfortunately have to draw the yarn through a loop with every stitch that you undo, it doesn’t run freely. So it is do-able if you just have to remove a cast-on edge, or a couple of rounds, but after that it is impractical and the yarn can get worn and tangled from the friction.

If you are happy to shorten the plain section only, snip a thread a few rounds into the plain section and separate the bottom half from the top. Then I can see two choices:

You could shorten the lower sleeve by unravelling a few rounds, and then graft it back on. (If there is shaping in the part you unravel, you will have to factor this in somehow.)

You could unravel the whole lower sleeve and reknit it downwards. The stitches won’t look like they are going in the opposite direction as long as the sleeve is in stockinette.

Good luck! Do post a photo if you can and let us know how it goes.