Birthday Altered Sweater

Today my friend Lulu came over to do art for my Birthday...
We wanted to make some altered clothing. So she found this great demo for making a sweater into a cardigan. I like short sweaters and cardigans. So this project was right up my alley! I could take a pullover and make it a cardigan and cut off the bottom if I wanted to make it short...Perfect!

But we had to go shopping first and 4 hours later we came home with a fabulous amount of cloths from Goodwill. The Good will on my side of town is just great!
We had to go to the as is store to find a old wool sweater to alter the cloths at the Goodwill where either too nice or too expensive to cut up and make something new out of. ( I got this great black cashmere coat!)

So the first thing I did was take a wool sweater someone had shrunk in the washer and dryer. It was a little felted already..cool. and it was so soft and warm. I cut off the turtle neck collar. Then I cut up the center to make it a cardigan.

Next I found some old crocheted lace and sewed it onto the sweater.

Lulu taught me how to make a loop..this was the beginning then I did some blanket stitches around it to make it pretty and strong.

I put a vintage button on the top.When I was in High School I sewed all my cloths and worked with wool alot. So I learned how to press wool. Take a wet wash cloth and press it with your iron onto the wool. This sends out lots of hot seam. It had plenty of wrinkles after sitting in the as is Goodwill bends.

Then cut up an paper bag and press over it to dry out the wool sweater and finish your pressing.

It came out very pretty and I was the hit of the party for having whipped up a sweater in a couple hours!

Lulu took a black little cheap sweater and cut off the ribbing at the bottom. Cut up the middle to make it a cardigan sweater. She used white embroidery thread and a blanket stitched to embroidery up the front sides of the cardigan. Next she sewed with her machine using a decorative scallop stitch and black thread to sew a piece of white eyelet lace on the bottom! Very pretty but not finished when she left so I couldn't show you it finished.

Check out this tutorial for the pink sweater we used for our sweaters by clicking here.