Repairing a Well-Loved Sweater

So not all Store-related knit work is as fun as knitting store samples.  I'm open to taking repair jobs from customers, since despite telling myself I just don't have the time and energy, I can't leave poor damaged knitwear that someone's grandma or mom knit then.  Though I've learned to be more picky on the jobs I take on.

This sweater is one of the repair jobs that taught me that lesson.

This beauty was brought in by a local gentleman along with two other sweaters.  Um, about a year ago.  Oops.  They were all knit by his Mother years ago, and she's since passed away.  This is an important job.  The first sweater was an easy repair - a couple of broken strands and some mostly-matching yarn to fix the hole.  This is the second sweater, and boy did I under-estimate the work needed on her.

There are no before pictures, but there were quite a few holes in the sleeves.  Mostly at the elbows, but while repairing those, I noticed how thin the fabric was getting around the holes, and on other sections of the sleeves.  You can maybe see my patches above and below.

Maybe because I'm damn good at these sort of repairs - patching large sections and creating new fabric.  Though there's only so much I can do to match the yarn colour.

I only noticed the hole while taking these photos. You can sort of see a patch I started months ago. Obviously I didn't finish the section back then.

Sadly, looking over the whole sweater for other thin sections, I noticed just how brittle the yarn is getting.  I'm really not sure how long this poor thing will last, but hopefully it'll last a bit longer.  The armpits in particular are looking so strained and brittle, but there's only so much I can do here.  I've decided, for now, to leave this section be.  I'm going to tell him to bring it back in if he has any problems.  I may sew a fabric patch over the whole area if needed, rather than reinforce the entire area.

The last section to be repaired (other than a few wee holes around the colourwork at the bottom of the sweater) was the ratty hem.  I wish I'd taken a photo of it before hand, or even from a few hours ago.  I'd say about 2/3rds of the bottom hem were falling apart.  Mostly just on the cast-on row, but there were a few sections with broken strands a few rows down.

It took a few tries, and abandoning the hem to practice on the sleeve hems, but I managed to work out how to do a sewn reinforcement for most of the edge, with a few areas where I had to build up the fabric by picking up clean stitches and knitting the fabric up, then bind-off the edge.  My yarn is a bit more red than the sweater yarn, so you can kind of see what I'm talking in these photos, especially the one below that shows one section that I had to build up the fabric.

The sweater is having a bath right now.  Ye gods, I didn't realize how dirty this sweater is, poor thing.  I was hoping to take it to work tomorrow because I think he's coming by then, but I feel like I should leave the sweater in the bath overnight.  I added a bunch of moisturizing conditioner to try to add some moisture back into the fabric.  Don't know if it'll work, but it can't hurt.

Oh, and here's a shot of the yoke colourwork.  She really is a lovely sweater.  Despite the time and effort of this repair, I'm glad I could give it some life!

Do you ever tackle any big repair jobs?  I know I didn't before this.