Sunday, September 16, 2007

Recycling Wool Sweaters

In the November 2006 issue of Martha Stewart Living there was a beautiful a and inspiring article on woolen gifts made from felted sweaters (page 152). Since then I've been on the lookout for 100% wool sweaters while thrifting. I've acquired a small but satisfying collection of mainly cashmere sweaters usually costing only a couple of dollars each.

thrifted wool sweaters

You only have to feel the softness of these sweaters to immediately think of making stuffed animals. Here's my first attempt.

Bunny


There are also lots of people on Etsy making excellent use of wool sweaters. Here are some of my favorites:


Lullaboos from Margaret Wyngaard




Little Owl Grey by Chet and Dot



kitty girl 8 from Mimi Kirchner

3 comments:

Unknown said...

my favorite use of old sweaters is to use them to make pants for my kids. Striped sweaters work the best. My kids absolutely love their "cozy legs" and people are constantly stopping us on the street. I can make an infant size pair from the sleeves and a toddler size pair from the body of the sweater. I just use a simple pant pattern that has one piece to the pattern that you make two of. I also make mittens and hats from them. You can also use squares from old sweaters to sew into a quilt. Little hand held bean bags from felted sweaters make great toys. The possibilities are endless and for clothes I prefer the unfelted sweater although I love buying shrunken sweaters for my kids because they are so warm and thick. We just pulled our box of woolens out of the attic yesterday to start going through to figure out what I need to sew out of my growing pile of thrifted sweaters!

Samantha said...

These are great ideas. Thanks so much for sharing.

Unknown said...

Excellent ideas and too cute!!!

Help! Anyone who knows how to sew a sweater smaller? I lost weight (2 sizes) and have an ll bean nordic wool sweater (love it!). Now too big. Sew with machine or by hand? thread, wool yarn or? Any ideas appreicated...
Thanks, Nancy
can email to- oliversboise@msn.com