Saturday, January 12, 2019

Upcycling for the boy times 4



I wrote it in my previous post already, I am not sewing as much anymore as a few years ago. What did not change is my love for quick projects and today, I am showing you four long sleeves that I sewed in less than one hour in total, including cutting. They were, of course that super quick because they are upcycling projects. Sweaters from me and from my husband, that got a second live.



I love "before" pictures,  even though the quality of today's ones is crap, no other way to say so, I still added them. These four upcylces were a spur of the moment project. One evening, I was overwhelmed by the fact that there really was nothing with fitting long sleeves to be found in our son's closet. So, I pulled four garments out of the to-be-upcycled-pile (as big as the new fabric stash now a days), slapped them on my son for fun, made pictures with my phone... and adjusted the sweaters. The idea was that me and our son needed a quick fix (I my sewing kick and he clothes), so in my mind there was no time to take out the good camera and background screen. The modelled shot were made several days later, seeing as the clothes were worn before anyway he was allowed to just wear them before I made final pictures.




This heavy knitted sweater I bought for myself several years ago, I still love the style, but it just is not for me. When you upcyle such knitted fabric, a serger comes in extra handy. Jersey fabrics do not fray, but this knitted fabric will disintegrate into loose threads if not handled correctly. In the before-picture you see that the sweater's neckline is super big on our son and the whole thing is of course too long, I took off the neckline, cut a new body and sleeve pieces keeping the bottom intact and sewed back the neckline (that I had made smaller). No hemming for me on this one.



The white/blue sweater was one of my husbands favorites, but there was a  tiny hole near he bottom of the button placket. I closed the hole with a thread, but my husband did not deem the garment suitable for work anymore. He is a star in spotting small imperfections (not in me fortunately). I added four golden triangles at the bottom to the button placket. One was enough to cover the stitching of the tiny hole, but I wanted to give it an intentional look. For this sweater I actually kept the entire original neckline and just narrowed the body and made a new hem. This did of course result in a non-stripe matching between sleeves and body.



The other two sweaters got the same recipe as the white/blue striped one. I re-cut a sweater by keeping the neckline, and shoulder seams intact.The grey/black sweater was mine and by pulling up the neckline and two small hand stitched pleats keep the rather strange neckline perfectly in place. I could not save the entire text from the black sweater, the "S" from Shipyard lost it's top, in the sleeve cycle, but I think he looks fancy even with an incomplete 'S'.



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