Jorie's Sweatshirt

So as promised I will walk you through a felting project with a wool sweater - when you are done, you will have a beautiful felted bag.

Take a wool sweater and felt it - wash in hot water, dry on hot heat with tennis ball and repeat if necessary. Then lay out your sweater - I already cut off the arms to use as leg warmers for a Halloween costume. Make cuts as shown.

Then turn the sweater inside out and line up the side seams - so the bottom side seams match. Sew along the bottom - this is the only skill involved, so if you really can't sew, ask a friend or I guess you could duct tape it shut! Now turn the sweater back to the right side - you are done!! You have a super simple bag!

You could embellish with cut out felt pieces that you sew on or do a blanket stitch around the straps or you can just enjoy it NOW - so easy!!

There are a couple of projects you can make with the sleeves. You could make a sleeve to hold your plastic grocery bags, a cover for your water bottle so it doesn't "sweat" or a reusable sleeve for your coffee mug.

Now for the surprise craft project!

Over Christmas Colin showed me a sweatshirt online that had built in mittens - it was really cute, but not $70 cute. So, he asked me to make one for his girlfriend Jorie. Sure, no problem!

First I practiced on a sweatshirt that I already had - I had to remove the front pockets, which was a little tricky. I took my seam ripper and carefully took out the stitches. Then I went looking for a  pair of mittens - apparently you can't buy mittens in Pennsylvania in January - but if I needed a pair of sandals, I'd be in luck. So I took one of my felted sweaters - the one I showed you yesterday that looked like a basketball and I cut out a mitten from the sleeve - the bottom was the cuff. I stitched up the sides - it worked perfect!! Then I hand sewed it onto the sweatshirt.

The $70 sweatshirt now was free!!

I gave that one to my niece "Abischmale" which is what her Uncle Cam calls her (no, we can't get him to stop):

mittens...

or no mittens!!!

Isn't that cute!! Now to make another one for Jorie. I bought a navy blue sweatshirt at Target, ripped out the front pockets.  My friend Anne had hunter green mittens she didn't want. I sewed those onto the front. Colin gave it to her this past week when she was down visiting - she loved it! And it was so easy!

The best part about making something for someone is the time I spend working on it. I can't help but think about that person and to pray for them - I feel like it is a double gift I get to give them.

Crafting for those we love, makes cents!!