(Un)finished business

While digging through my stash in search of some fabric for a new project, I came across a halfway finished sweater. I started it about a year ago, but after lots of struggling, sweating and seam ripping, I tossed it away, discouraged!

I struggled mainly with the binding around the hood and the zipper. While the hood became reasonably OK after many attempts, I just couldn't get the bottom of the zipper right. It was all skewed and ugly. But upon seeing it again last week, I suddenly knew how to fix the problem. Hide it! I ripped the leather tag from one of the kids' jeans, cut out a triangle, and stitched on top of the flawed part! Hurray! A sweater saved!

Now it was just a matter of finishing the side seams, adding some elbow patches out of the last remains of my favorite fabric, finishing the bottom hem, and voila, a new fall sweater for my boy.

The color scheme is very 2013, but the boy won't care about that. More importantly, the sweater fits him perfectly, even after waiting a year in my stash. Fortunately, I cut out a roomy size last year!

The pattern is the Autumn Forest from Ottobre 6-2012. I must say that I'm not very enthusiastic about the pattern. First, the hood is enormous and quite out of proportion.

Furthermore, the pattern asks for ribbed knit for the binding. At my first attempts, I had trouble getting the tension right, resulting in a very wavy hood. So that's the part were the seam ripper was used more than I liked.

Finally, the pattern does not ask for lining. However, since the inside of the hood is always visible, as is the backside of the zipper (when zipped open), it would look much better if the hood and body were lined. I did line the hood with a heavy furry fleece (causing even more trouble for the binding), but in hindsight, I would have lined the body too. Furthermore, I would have encased the binding between the two layers. That would probably have resulted in a much nicer finish of the hood and zipper.

O well, at least I learned a lot from my mistakes. I do like how the binding goes all around the zipper and hood, so maybe another, similar sweater will follow, but with my modifications!
And that little triangle really saves the day, don't you think?