Over the holidays I made an ugly sweater dress from ugly sweaters, for an ugly sweater party. That got me hooked sewing thrift store sweaters. Eventually I started buying the "nice" thrift store sweaters, ala Betz White. I have 100% natural fibers in solid colors with a few fun knitted designs on there. That rockin' hat (below) was the crowning jewel on the ugliest dress, ugliest sweater, ugliest Christmas attire known to woman-kind.
I made scarflettes using the U-Create tutorial as a guide. (This scarflette is made a synthetic fiber sweater.) Instead of using the entire torso of a sweater, I made two narrower scraflettes from the sleeves. My sister-in-law has the matching cream colored scarflette. I'm sure she has some kind of fabulous felt flower or rolled rosette on there by now. My blue vintage brooch is also from a thrift store.
Well, I liked sewing with the sweaters. Its like thrift store linen, but in the winter. =)The next thing I made were a couple plain pillows from the main torso of the sweater.
The creamy white one pillow is the torso from the scarflettes sweater. The red sweater pillow is felted cashmere. The cool thing about buying the 100% wool fiber sweaters at the thrift store is that the ones I seem to be finding are there because the original owners accidentally shrank/felted them. Thank you, Ms Original Owner; you have totally saved me a step!
Ooooh- what did I make next??!!?!? Inquiring minds want to know. Well, that red sweater had some leftovers. I couldn't possibly just have felty cashmere-y leftovers! I decided to make the "WHAT? REALLY!" Punctuation Pillow. I kinda have a quirky sense of humor. I'm sure we all do in some capacity.
This Punctuation Pillow, with a ? and !, is only one total pillow. The red cashmere used to be sleeves. The grey lamb's wool is from the torso of one sweater. It measures approximately 13" x 18" & is stitched shut. The two punctuations are raw-edge appliqued to the sweater using a straight stitch. I ended up stitching them on by hand because I wasn't sure if the sewing machine would stretch the sweater/shapes since I have no stablizer/interfacing in the project. Oh, one other thing- I custom made the pillow forms. Its more fun to have "any shape I feel like" on the couch, rather than the standard square or bolster shapes.
Think you might need a Punctuation Pillow?!?! I added the hand-drawn (then scanned and traced in Illustrator) original characters to a little printable pdf for you. Click the image above or click HERE to get the template. The seam allowances are included, so you can use any applique method and any fabric type you prefer.
So now I have a mood couch. A snuggly-winter-sweater-mood-couch. Feeling inquisitive? Feeling assertive! Indecisive? Thrilled!
*If you make a Punctuation Pillow, I'd love to see it over in the ReannaLily Designs Flickr Pool.
If you've been following along this far and doing the mental math in your head, you'll know I have 1/2 a grey sweater left. Ooooh.... what will be next? Who knows. Time will tell.
1 comment:
Ok Jen....too much time on your hands? :-) Seriously, LOVE the pillows. They are totally you.
Post a Comment