Eileen Fisher Sweater Save?

In the past I've had great success (and savings) repairing Eileen Fisher sweaters, so when I came across an incredible bargain at my TJ Maxx store, I was ready for another save.

A large hole on the right front of this sweater had driven the price down from $298 to $6.  A quick look at the yarn convinced me that the texture would help hide my repairs.  What I didn't see is that this isn't simple stockinette stitch, but a slipped stitch pattern with two yarns - a hand knitting weight black and tan marled yarn and a heavy black thread.  The thread's breaking was what had caused the hole.

A much longer look still didn't leave me with much more insight into the structure of the stitch.  While it was clearly a slip stitch pattern because not every stitch was worked in a row of the black thread, I could not get a sense of any regular pattern, i.e. k1, sl 1 or k2, sl 1, etc.  So, I collected the dropped stitches onto a size US #7 needle, since that seemed about right.  I thought that the length of the yarn strands from the dropped stitches might give me a clue as to how many of the stitches had been knit vs. slipped, again it didn't seem to be a regular pattern.

So, I just kinda re-knit as many stitches as I had yarn to work and recreated the rows up to the point at which the break occurred.  Then I took two strands of a heavy upholstery thread to simulate the original black thread/yarn and worked a Kitchener seam.

In all this maneuvering, I had not found the other end of the broken heavy black thread.  So I continued with my upholstery thread and ran it back and forth through the back of the thick stitches to anchor my repair.  This resulted in a somewhat stiffer fabric, but less concern over future unraveling.  The finished appearance is not seamless with the surrounding fabric, but, as I had determined up front, the heavy texture does help hide the repair.

To test the success I sent the sweater off to my daughter at college since she (and not I) wears an extra small.  She has had it a week with no comments or  questions, so I think it has passed.  Fingers crossed.