I have some pullover sweaters that I like, but since I'm at that point in my life when I'm either cold, or suddenly warm, I now hesitate to wear them since they can't opened (or removed) quickly and easily. This past weekend, I decided that tweaking two of these sweaters is better than having them sit on the shelf, so I took the chance, and made them in to cardigans.
The sweater above is the result of my cutting an opening in the front of this simple blue-ish pullover. It came with the fun little round wool bead-like things on the edge of the neck, arms and bottom. I wanted to play on that, and also add some black to make the sweater more bold, at least in the front.
I used my needle felting machine and felted some different colored circles on the black wool, and then attached it to the sweater. I then made a trip to my local sewing store where I found some fun buttons to funk this sweater up some more.
This is the sweater opened up. Success!
Next I was on to a black wool and angora blend turtleneck sweater, that came with pink yarn stitched in to it as a decoration. I love this sweater. I was extremely nervous about cutting it but since I find myself too warm when I wear it, I held my breath and got started.
I wanted it to button, but I didn't want to sew button holes. I already had this very large scale black rick-rack, so I decided to put it to good use. I attached it to a thin strip of black wool, and then sewed it to the sweater, so it could act as my button holes. I got black velvet covered buttons at the sewing store, and sewed them so they would button through every other zig-zag apart from the rick-rack. Above is a close-up buttoned closed, and below partially opened.
Both of these sweaters came from Marshalls, my favorite clothing store, a few years ago and cost under $20 each. The buttons added to my expense, but not much.
Since this project worked out so well, I'm going to see what other sweaters I have in my closet, that could use funking up or be transitioned from pullover to cardigan.
(Note: The black sweater is jet black, but I had to lighten the photo to show what I did.)
