Well, elections are over and my guy didn't win, but life will go on. It may not be life as we know it, but it will go on. Since the last few years have been occupied with political websites by my hubby (and to a somewhat lesser degree) me, I am finding that I need to throw out the old and bring in some new. I've cleaned up my computer of lots of the news sites that I was following and have been delving into some new things.
When not blogging or reading tweets, I go to the craft web sites. As you know I have a page on
Pinterest and I like to browse on Craftgawker and Etsy. If you aren't on Pinterest and need an invite, please let me know and I'll "hook you up" as they say. I'm not sure if anyone still says that, or if it means the same thing these days, but that's another story altogether.
Keeping all this in mind, me looking for something new to try and such, I have been researching recycling sweaters. I love to sew and I thought it would be fun to work with sweaters. I have always wanted to felt a sweater but never realized that you could do it in the washing machine. I recently got a new top loading washing machine (my old faithful front-loader finally needed to be replaced due to an unknown mold problem) and this top loader is great for felting because you can stop the wash cycle and look at the garment.
I hit the Goodwill several times looking for 100% wool sweaters and there are not as many as you would think. I found a mohair monstrosity and a small cashmere twinset. Almost all sweaters are cotton or acrylic. Who would have known? I did find a striped wool scarf/muffler that looked promising and something I was willing to cut into. It's hard to destroy a perfectly good garment in order to makes something else out of it. But anyway, onward and upward.
If you aren't familiar with felting (not to be confused with needle felting, btw)
here is a quick tutorial. The one thing I wasn't prepared for was the smell. Remember that "wet dog" smell that your sweaters got when you came in from playing in the snow as a kid? Yep, that's what hot wet wool smells like, even with detergent added. Not my favorite aroma.
Long story short, I felted my items and got the scissors and went to work. There is a learning curve, to be sure. After several hours I finished a felted sweater pillow and I kind of like it.
I have been seeing lots of sweater items with the seams on the outside for texture, so I mixed it up and little bit with some seams showing. I made the star simply by placing a star template on the sweater and basting around it before sewing it on the machine, then I cut out the star shape. Much easier than trying to sew around a pre-cut shape. Learned that trick from making doll appendages.
While the last sweater was in the dryer I made two pin cushions that were fun.
The fish is simply cut out from a printed piece of fabric, sewed right sides together and turned. To do this, I split the back of the fish, turned it right sides out and added fiber fill, then whipped stitched it closed. I attached an additional piece of fabric and ran a wrist band from an old pincushion and there you go. The little hat shaped one is made with a jar lid as a base and a circle of fabric stuffed and tacked on to the base. A bit of ribbon hides the boo-boos and it's ready to use.
While I haven't found the stash of sweaters one would need to make something like this...
I'm happy with the direction I'm taking. Speaking of that monstrosity of a mohair sweater, a very large loosely knitted sweater when felted, turns into a dense heavy piece of fuzzy wool. I didn't know about taking the sweater apart first, so this is what I ended up with. What's next for it? Any ideas?
That's all for now. Have a great weekend and stay healthy and happy. I do have another project in the works and that will probably be next week's post.
xoxo to you all.
