Tuesday's Tute: A Child's Sweater

It's sweater time! And, you know how we like to upcycle around our house. The light blue tunic sweater was once a XL women's sweater. It's soft chenille and fun fringe caught my daughter's eye immediately. It's now affectionately called the Jellyfish sweater.
She also saw a "very soft", actually cashmere, sweater in my closet. (I found it at a thrift store a couple of years ago.) She asked me if she could have it, since I never wear it. As much as I like it, it's simply not the right color for me.
So we've made it hers.
How you wonder? Well let me tell you.

Materials:
Adult Sweater (washable): You can make any sweater washable by washing and drying it. The cashmere one shrank quite a bit, but it's going to become a child's size anyway.
The sweater just needs to be larger than the one you're going to create. You can make an adult sweater also. Just make sure to have a couple of sizes of cutting room.
Shirt pattern: Of course you can get one here...Fun and Easy Knit Top
Sewing supplies

Directions:

Deconstruction:

1. Cut the large sweater apart. Up the side seams, across the shoulder seams, remove the sleeves.

2. Lay on your pattern back. I prefer to use the existing neckline if I can. Necklines often give me trouble, so using one already done saves me a headache. However, here, I couldn't so I used the hem edge instead.

3. Cut the back piece.

4. Lay and cut the front piece.

5. Lay the sleeve using the sleeve hem.

6. Cut the sleeve. Our pattern has the sleeve on the fold. Our sleeves shrank to just the right width so we also kept the underarm seam. I cut both sleeves at once. You may want to cut them separately unless you have very sharp scissors.

7. With right sides together (RST), sew shoulder seams and stay stitch neckline. Stay stitch the neckline so it doesn't stretch or unravel while being worked with. (This only applies if you didn't get to use the original neckline.) Always finish your raw edge or the sweater will unravel. (Serger or zigzag)

8. If necessary, hem the neckline by turning the raw edge to the wrong side and stitching with a 2 x 2 zig zag.

9. Since we kept the underarm seam, I needed to snip about 2" loose to put the sleeve in the top.

10. Ease in sleeve. (RST)

11. Sew side seams and underarm. (RST)

The finished and now much smaller and washable cashmere sweater. Or Jellyfish sweater (above).

Once you get started upcycling things into yours or your children's children's clothing, you'll never see clothing in terms of size (too big) again. :) My children get the strangest looks in the thrift store while searching through the adult clothing for something they want to wear. Many well meaning adults have tried to kindly redirect them only to hear, "I know, my mommy will make this fit me, so it's ok." All with me close by, of course.

I hope your children, or you, enjoy your new sweaters!

Happy Sewing!

Debbie