Keeping Me Honest: Einstein Jacket

Heather is what Rick calls one of my "imaginary friends."  She is a friend of my cousin Julie from her college days, and lives in the greater Chicago area (I think) with her husband and kids.  I have never met her in the "real world," but was chatting with her one day about her 10 year old son who uses a wheelchair and finds it difficult to wear a coat without it bunching uncomfortably in the back.  Apparently they make coats which split up the back, specifically to address this problem - but they are gawdawful expensive not cheap.  So I thought I'd try to make the little guy a sweater coat which split up the back.

I wandered around and looked at various patterns, and consulted with the online knitting community.  A very nice lady donated her knitting machine and a book of patterns for "special people," and I'm sure I'll put it to good use eventually - but the thing was a bit intimidating and I just never found the right moment to try it out.  But in the meantime my friend Nadine was just finishing an Einstein Jacket from Sally Melville's The Knit Stitch book, and it occurred to me that the pattern would be ridiculously easy to modify for a split lower back.  The entire lower section of the jacket is one long garter stitch rectangle, reminiscent of the "scarf from never-ending hell" which becomes the first project of almost every new knitter.  So, instead of one long skinny rectangle I made two rectangles which were each just a bit more than half the total length called out by the pattern.  Overlap the two back edges when picking up the stitches for the center back, and voila! I have a sweater coat split up to about mid-back.  (I just hope the tiny overlap of stitches doesn't make a weird bump in his back when the sweater is being worn.)

I started with 2 one pound cones of Lamb's Pride Bulky in their "Grassy Knoll" color (and can't get Kennedy out of my head for some reason).  I also have a single skein of a matching medium green in worsted weight; I'll ask my friend Tammy to single-crochet around the edges with it, but if push comes to shove I can also use it double-strand for cuffs and collar or something.  Worst case scenario, Oregon Trails on Ebay will certainly have more of the variegated green, although I'd rather not pay for more shipping.

The pattern is meant to be fairly loose and the upper torso naturally droops down to make the first few inches of sleeve - but the whole thing looks big to me.  I may have to find a 10 year old to try it on.  What do you think?