This Ain’t Your Grandma’s Sweater

Actually it is Grandma’s sweater. Re-purposed.

Remember how my mom gave me two entire trash bags full of sweaters?

What is a girl to do with all of these sweaters? Well, make sweater puppets, stuffed animals, Pottery Barn Knock-off pillows, and hats, of course.

And today I learned something even more awesome from the blog Smashed Peas and Carrots when I was Googling for more ideas about what to do with these sweaters. You can make toddler dresses out of them! Genius, that is, pure genius. Had to try it.

I made mine without the sleeves, though, because I liked the jumper concept and the sleeves seemed a little beyond my limited seamstress capabilities.

Start by tracing a dress your daughter already owns onto the sweater. This dress is shorter than I wanted the jumper to be, so I placed it up a little higher. Give yourself some wiggle room on the outside for a seam allowance. I don’t measure, I’m a really sloppy sewer, but Smashed Peas and Carrots says to leave 1/4 of an inch.

Cut along the line, I did both sides of the sweater at once to make things as easy as possible for myself.

Put the two pieces right-sides-together and sew from the arm hole (Where my finger is) down on both sides. Then sew the shoulder straps together, making sure to go back and forth a few times for stability.

My mom gave me a Serger for my birthday, but I don’t know how to use it yet, so I zig-zaged around the outside of the arm holes to prevent the sweater from unraveling. This gave a pretty cool ruffled effect, but it wasn’t what I was going for so eventually I decided to hem the arm holes. It’s not necessary to do both, just pick one or the other. (The arm holes also stretched quite a bit, so at the very end I sewed them shut a bit more.)

The neck is sort of hard to explain, but I’ll do the best I can. I cut the neck off of the sweater and pined it to the wrong side of the jumper. Then I zig-zag stiched to attach the two piece together. (Again, I wish I knew how to use that Serger that is sitting in its box on the kitchen table.)

Then turn the sweater right-side-out (Ignore the fact that it is still wrong-side-out in the picture below and just focus on the way the collar is folded. I was still experimenting at the point when I took this picture.) and fold the collar over the front. If your collar is cooperative it should stay like this, but mine wasn’t, so I stitched it in place.

At this point I also decided to hem the sleeves because I was going for a clean, classic look.

I made another sweater hat to match it. (That’s the 6th one this week!)

Now to wait for the little one to wake up in the morning so we can play dress up…
How stinkin’ cute would this be with some white tights and maybe a white long-sleeved shirt underneath?

Answer: This cute!

(The arm holes don’t really stick out like the pic on the right, but this was the best picture I could get to show the length)

It would have cost about $30 to buy this sweater jumper & hat on sale at Gymboree, but in this case I actually like my free ones better anyway. Not bad for an hour’s work after the kids were in bed.

Time for me to go do my happy dance. 🙂