Spring Sweater Refashion #4 {Tutorial}

Monday, March 21, 2011

Spring Sweater Refashion #4 {Tutorial}

Welcome to my quest to refashion my wardrobe!

My fourth Spring Sweater Refashion started off as a plain, green sweater from Target.

It hung in my closet without much wear because it was so plain and I wasn’t sure what to wear with it.

I decided to add some embellishments to one side of it, using some of my fabric scraps from my craft room. This is a 1.5 hour project, just because making the rosette flowers are a little time consuming.

But totally worth it, I think!!

Here’s what you need:

Sweater or cardigan

7-8 different coordinating fabrics {I used some fat quarter squares that I had in my fabric stash}

Sewing machine

Needle and thread

Fabric Glue {optional}

Here’s what you do:

1. Cut your coordinating fabric in 1 inch strips.

2. Take two of the fabrics and ruffle it up by sewing a big seam down the center of the fabric. I used 4 feet of 1” strips to make the ruffle on my sweater.

3. Once the strips are ruffles, lay them on one side of the sweater in a zig zag pattern.

4. Pin the ruffles in place. Then sew the ruffles onto the sweater.

5. Now make some fabric flowers with the other fabric strips. I have a fabric rosette tutorial on how to make fabric flowers if you want to check it out.

I made 9 different flowers in different sizes. To make the flowers different sizes, all you do is use different lengths of fabric strips. The shorter the length of fabric = the smaller the flower.

6. Once your flowers are done, use a needle and thread to attach them to the sweater. I also put some Beacon fabric glue under the flowers to keep them even more securely in place.

7. If you are using fabric glue, you can use some weights like books to press the flowers onto the sweater securely. Note – if you are using fabric glue, be sure that there is some wax paper underneath the sweater so the fabric glue doesn’t seep through the front of the sweater onto the back. I found this out the hard way – lol!

8. And if you don’t like the frayed look of the unfinished edges, use a product like “Fray Check” on the edges. This will stop the edges from fraying.