Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Wednesday, 5/12/10 Another Repurposed Sweater

Another Repurposed Sweater
I can’t help myself; I have a problem with picking up sweaters like this one at the thrift store. I either like the color or I might just like the buttons. I bring sweaters home with me, and I launder them, and if they make it out of the washing machine in one piece, they hang around for a while until I get an idea for what to do with them. My ideas don’t always come right away and may even take a few days or months or years. My ideas may not come in the form of trims that I’ve seen, like the one for this sweater.

I saw a pattern for a baby afghan that had granny squares turned on point with zigzags running on the top and bottom of them. I found the pattern in a vintage 80’s pattern book by Jean Leinhauser and Rita Weis, and I thought of adding it to the sweater that had been hanging around for a few months. After I sewed the squares together and added the zigzag at the top, I decided to add my own design of stripey goodness for the bottom edge. Then, since I wasn’t quite finished, I decided instead of crocheting the edging onto the sweater, I thought it might look neat to button it onto the edging. I looked for 15 buttons of the same color in my button box and came up empty handed, so I found some buttons that were around the same size, and I crocheted around all of them.

Steph was Kind
I showed my new repurposed sweater to my friend Steph, and she was kind enough to try it on for me and model for the picture. I like the way it turned out, but I don’t think I’m quite done with it yet. I still think it needs to have one row of edging around the fronts and around the neck, just to tie it all together.