Saving the cut vertical edge of a sweater armhole

Hello knitters!

I’m hoping to get a lead or creative problem solving ideas for an interesting issue I’ve never encountered previously.

My friend purchased a commercially knit shirt with drop sleeves that she wanted to remove. Unfortunately she cut them off before bringing it to me, otherwise I might’ve saved us some trouble.

In the photos you can see that the remaining edge is a horizontal rib, and the cut went across most of the rows and not just the seam holding the arm to the arm hole.

I’m not opposed to weaving, knitting, or even tacking down via sewing all the loose cut edges before casting on my own ribbing on top, but I was wondering if anyone here has tried to repair a cut like this? If so, do you have any clever advice or ideas on how to lock in the loose ends of the various rows so that they don’t unravel further towards the body.

Please let me know if that’s hard to understand or if this is a bit of a lost cause (meaning lots of hand sewing and such). My concern w a not knit/crochet repair is that if I make a lot of knots to hold these loose strands that my friend will feel all of them when wearing the garment against her skin.

I thought about trying some kind of steeling to hold the edge from unraveling further and then pick up knitting a new rib from the main body. Making the new rib long enough to fold under and seam, effectively capturing the “raw” edge left from her ministrations. Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!!

I was able to unravel one arm to get quite a bit of yarn back

Close up of cut edge, right armhole

Backside of right armhole edge

By the time she got to the left armhole she luckily started to understand the structure and I only see one area of damage that I think I can tie and weave stitches back together

Welcome to KH!
It’s a very nice sweater and worth trying to save. My first thought was to treat it like a steek as you mentioned. Run a couple of lines of sewing, even machine stitching at a small stitch length. It’ll take the stretch out of the armhole but it’ll secure the ends. Then pick up and knit a new edge or sleeve.

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I thought of this tutorial:

But I’m not sure how you would account for the cut strands without weaving in lots of new bits, which would make the area bulky.

A different approach could be to bind the edges with bias binding made from a loosely woven lightweight linen.

I think the steek idea might be best. You could hand sew or crochet it to try to keep some stretch. Then maybe pick up and knit a facing to fold to the back.

Tinking Turtle has a fantastic blog documenting her mending business. Perhaps there is something there to help:
https://www.tinkingturtle.com/tag/repair/

Good luck!

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Thanks so much for these suggestions, I’m checking out the links y’all shared now. I also found a video by Aleks Byrd for her process on making a rib steek sandwich

I’ve knit my good share of things but I’ve never ventured into fair isle so this’ll (hopefully) be fun to try out :sweat_smile:

I’ll post updates on my progress later today or tomorrow! Thanks again

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Very clever use of a steek! Thank you for the video.

Oh, I suddenly wondered about reknitting one side of the front. The gauge doesn’t look too fine, and you could copy the other side as you went, if you can replicate those fancy-looking decreases along the neckline. But then you would also have to reknit a fair bit of the back, almost from the armscye up.

So the steek still wins, I think!

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