I
was always a fan of my boyfriend's rust-orange sweater. Sadly,
something else must have been a fan too—of its taste! He passed the
sweater on to me after finding a number of small holes (which might have
been from moths) dotting its surface. Now, I'll repair one hole. I
might even repair two holes. But get to three or four holes, and it's
time to let that garment go! Except, I was such a fan...and there was so
much usable surface left on the sweater, I couldn't bear to just throw
it away.
The
sweater was a little big on me; I thought about trying to sew a few
vertical seams to make it tighter and simultaneously hide the holes
inside, but I kept finding shopping websites featuring sweaters
absolutely riddled with holes. Big holes, small holes, huge rips, it
seemed like distressed sweaters were trending.
So I decided to make one of my own.
I
wanted a ragged "accidentally unraveled" look, but couldn't quite
achieve it with the tight knit, so I settled for cutting out more or
less perfect circles in varying sizes. I used nail scissors because the blades are better suited for cutting curves.
I
did a lot of trying on, re-cutting, enlarging, and adding more holes.
They look random, but they are actually very deliberately arranged to
achieve what I hoped was an aesthetic balance.
One
controversial decision I made was to not put any holes in the back of
the sweater. In fact, the one hole that was already there, I very
carefully patched with a piece I'd cut from the front.
Before patching |
After patching |
My
last step was to take in the sides a little bit to make the sweater
fit me better. I removed a bit of fabric from the armpit area, and flared the seams towards the bottom so it would still
fit over my hips as a tunic.
For
its first wear, I decided to let the sweater do the talking, and paired
it with mostly neutral pieces—a pair of unobtrusive jeans, beige
thigh-high boots, and gold earrings. Underneath the sweater, I went with
a flesh-toned camisole, because I found that anything more colorful
looked weird up at the top where you could see the straps through some
of the holes.
Wow, brave girl! And you can totally carry it off. Thanks for posting.
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