The Wool Cardigan Make-Over

I have had this wool, button-down cardigan sweater for so long that I no longer remember where it came from. I don't really like cardigan sweaters, so Ula and I decided it must have been a gift from my mother sometime in the distant past.



This past week, I decided it was finally time to give it a make-over.

The sweater had been washed sometime in the past and was already partially felted, so I didn't worry about it unraveling, as I cut off part of the sleeves and cut down the bodice to turn it into a shrug.

For the length of the sleeves, I just laid one of my short sleeve T-shirts over the sweater and cut where the short sleeve ended. The length of the bodice was determined by where the pockets on the sweater were situated. The top edge of the patch pockets became my cutline.



I removed the buttons and sewed the button holes closed.



I then measured around one of the sleeves, doubled that amount and cut two pieces of lace that length. Doing first one piece of lace, than the other, I sewed the raw ends of a piece of lace together to form a circle, used large basting stitches to gather the lace, pinned it in place around the very edge of the sleeve, and sewed it in place. I did the same thing for the lace along the bottom edge of the shrug (except I did not make it into a circle before sewing it on).

I like using cotton lace, because I can throw some in with any other fabric I may be dying and have a far wider variety of colors than the fabric store offers. This black lace was dyed in two different batches over a year ago and was just sitting around waiting to be used.



The final touch was a decorative clasp.