It is done.  THE SWEATER is done.  wow.  yay.

First things first.  Today we had to take on the final step.  This part had me more intimidated than any part of the project.  The installation of the zipper.  Luckily, I had my helper by my side.

He helped me with the stitch markers.

He handed me pins.

He took pictures for me.

He provided me with great moral support.

I ended up using a little bit of this and that from several of the zipper tutorials.  I will have forgotten how I did this by tomorrow, so for future reference, I am going to give a brief overview of the steps I took.

I used stitch markers to close the front up evenly.  Then I basted the front closed.  I then grabbed the zipped up zipper.  I turned the sweater inside out and I pinned the zipper (closed) to the wrong side front.  The basting from the front held everything together well, and I centered the middle of the zipper on the middle of the wrong side front.  Next I whipstitched up both sides of the zipper.  (right side of zipper was facing the wrong side of the sweater.) Then I removed the pins.  I turned the sweater right side out, and I removed the basting.

At this point some tutorials suggested turning the sweater inside out again and sewing the zipper down with a backstitch.  The purl bee had a tutorial though that suggested backstitching it up the right side which is what I did.  This way I could really concentrate on getting as close to the zipper edge as possible, but I could test my zipper along the way to make sure that it was zipping easily.

I have to say I am a little proud of myself.

I was hoping for a frigid photo shoot in the snow, but David wasn’t home until after dark so we had to settle for inside photos.  It’s so cold out; this was probaby for the best.

It fits him well, and he likes it.

Davey got in the photos too, of course!

And here it is from behind.

I am feeling pretty thrilled.