Sweater Refashion!
A few months ago, my Mom donate this boiled wool sweater to my crafting pile. It had ratty wool fringe around the edges, and was looking dated. Fast forward a few months, and Mom’s birthday was coming up… so being the frugal (i.e. broke) daughter that I am, I decided to give it back to her!
The first thing I did was cut off all the fringe! I also rolled the shawl collar under and hand-stitched it in place with brown wool. It makes much more flattering collar! I also used the machine to take in the sides a bit to make it all less boxy. I debated some more drastic changes, but decided to keep it simple!
Then came the fun part: Embellishing! I’m a total sucker for cherry blossoms, so I grabbed a piece of Japanese sakura fabric for inspiration. While the sweater was on the dress form, I did a running stitch in cream wool for the branches. I started playing with wool flowers leftover from my latest round of broach-making, and voila! Cherry blossom sweater. I actually did some needle-felting on the flowers too, but didn’t really like how it looked… I ended up stitching a cream cross-stitch on each blossom instead. Sometimes enough is enough!
I always find it a bit awkward giving people handmade gifts – There’s always a part of me that worries they are faking that they like it! I’m happy to say that Nom was wearing it yesterday! More pictures to follow!
Crafting A Rainbow 