Are you a cardigan girl? I TOTALLY am.
This tutorial on Pinterest inspired me and I promise you that soon I will have more cardigans than is healthy for a girl.
Here’s what you need to transform your tired sweater into a fresh new cardigan:
- sweater
- tailor’s chalk or other fabric marking tool
- Heat’N Bond ultrahold iron-on adhesive (5/8″)
- iron
- standard sewing supplies (thread, scissors, machine, etc.)
1. Fold your sweater in half through the center front, making sure the collar, sleeves, and hem are all lined up and straight. Lay a rotary ruler on top of the sweater and run the tailor’s chalk along the fold to mark the center. Open it up and make sure it looks centered.
2. Cut all the way up through the front of the sweater only.
3. Open up the sweater and smooth out the cut edges – they will curl a bit.
4. Following the HeatnBond instructions, press the iron-on tape right up next to the cut edge on the wrong side of the sweater. Do on both left and right front pieces of the now cardigan.
5. Peel the paper backing off, turn the edge back on itself so it’s wrong sides together with the adhesive in between and press to create the finished center edge.
6. Sewing with the unfinished edge on top, stitch the two layers together. (I used the 5/8″ line on my sewing machine.) DON’T STITCH up through the collar part with your machine, tack it down by hand or there will be a very visible and ugly line there.
Finished! The whole thing took me about 10 minutes and I’m going to our local thrift store this afternoon to see what sweater treasures I can find to make MORE CARDIGANS!
Before I started I thought I might want to sew pearl buttons or something on to make it look more like a real cardigan, but nah. I love it just how it is!
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Thank you! I am going to try this
This is sooo cool. Thank you so much!
Oh. Mygod. This shall be the salvation of a pull-over that I DEARLY love, but that has a teeny moth hole right in the center front.
Do you feel the love? Because *LOVE*
I totally am excited to try this. It turned out so cute.
I think I will try this with a long sleeve t’shirt -
I do this with sweat shirts.
I have been wanting to do this since I saw it on pinterest a couple weeks ago. I finally tried it this week and just blogged about it. I linked back to you. I love this and will definitely be finding more sweaters to turn into treasures! :) Thanks!!
love it!! I used to do this with sweat shirts for adults and babies and children–then embelish them really fun
I bet you could apply the same principal to the sleeves if you wanted 3/4 length. May have to taper them a little. Going through my closet for a new wardrobe.
this is a super idea, would also be great with sweatshirts. I find new or practically new ones at my resale or Goodwill shop
Really liked this idea. good recycling.
Thanks for the idea! I suck at crafts but can’t stop trying new ones, and I am actually quite good at this! I recycled 2 hooded sweatshirts this morning and 2 badly fit sweaters into cardigans that look great on me. I appreciate the simplicity of your tutorial.
This looks pretty easy. Thanks for sharing.
Love this idea. I am worried about the sweater unraveling before the strip is ironed on so I might try drawing the chalk line with the sweater inside out and ironing on both strips either side of the centre line before I cut. It would stop it curling.
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