Learning to Embroider & Making Scarves

Since I've been in the midst of yet another papercrafting creative slump and the guys have been playing video games all day I took the opportunity to play in other crafting ways.  Today I broke out the embroidery machine that my dh bought me for Christmas and decided to see how well it would embroider on sweaters.  I was very pleased with the outcome and decided to turn my play pretties in to one of my upcycled sweater scarves.

 

Don't you just love these adorable snowmen marshmallows?  I absolutely fell in love with them the moment I saw them so I had to buy the designs from Julia's Needle Designs here.  Of course seeing how well these turned out I know that I'll have to do some more but after making seven different upcycled scarves today (not all embroidered) that will have to wait for another day.

Don't get me wrong, making these scarves is easy as all get out.  Just cut a few squares and rectangles, serge them all together to your desired length, then back with a piece of flannel and boom - DONE.  Seriously, what could be easier?  And I get compliments on them all the time.  Of course the hard part comes from finding great sweaters at the thrift store.  But, if you're lucky like me you have a great one close by that sells their clothes dirt cheap.  And by cheap I mean yard sale cheap - not like some of these chain thrift stores that want almost new prices.  But I digress.....

 

....and since tomorrow is another glorious day off for us, I have a feeling that the guys will be back to their video games - and that means I'll have more crafting time.......just one of the many things I love about a long, holiday weekend. 

 

Hmmmm, wonder what I'll craft up tomorrow?

Upcycled Sweater Scarves

Olive Oyl

 

I got my serger back from the sewing repair shop the other day and while I was headache free this weekend decided to sit down and put a few scarves together.  I love finding great sweaters at the thrift store (the one where I can get them for $1 each), cutting them up and piecing them back together again.  It's like creating art from puzzle pieces. 

Flower Power

Purple Crown

Pocket Scarf

After cutting out squares for an hour or so yesterday morning I sat down and found that I had cut enough to make three scarves and still have a few squares left over.  The fourth scarf was one that I had almost finished putting together when me serger died last weekend.

Now talk about a disappointment.  My serger isn't even a year old yet and it was only the second time I had sat down to play with it.  But I am grateful that the same gentleman who repaired my mom's machines growing up is still around.  He does awesome work and is very reasonably priced.  And now that it's all fixed up my serger is running better than ever........

Upcycled Sweater Scarf

Over the Thanksgiving holidays I was introduced to a new craft called 'upcycling' and just fell in love with some of the things that I saw being made.  I began searching all over the internet, looking at blogs, etsy and anywhere I could find more on this interesting and not so surprising craft.  The more I looked the more I knew that I had to participate and so it began.....

I bought a couple of new books from Amazon Sweater Surgery and The Sweater Chop Shop.  Both books have some fabulous ideas but before I could play I had to find some sweaters so off I went to the thrift store where I found several for $1 to $3 each.

Now rather than hand stitching some of the projects I wanted to stitch them using a serger because I loved the look it gave to the finished project.  Problem was this I didn't have one......And true to his nature, my wonderful husband bought me one for Christmas!  However, I did not have time to actually sit down and learn how to use it until this weekend when I finally stitched my first (and oh so easy to do) upcycled project.

This scarf was so easy to do.  I snipped the sleeves off of 4 different sweaters.  Cut them along the seam to open them up and then cut as many 6" x 7" squares as I could from each sleeve.  I then laid my squares out into a configuration with which I was happy to create the desired length.  The I stitched the squares together one at a time with the wrong sides facing each other so that when the stitching was done you would see it.

See I told you it was easy.  And what a great idea for using up those unwanted sweaters you have hanging around on your closet shelf.