Friday, December 20, 2013

Upcycled Leg Warmers

Hello! Less than a week until Christmas and of course, I'm just still working on some of the presents. This was so easy and fun for me because I got to embroider (yay!). I had a sweater that no longer fits me, but I just love it and its over sized buttons, so I decided to make leg warmers out of the sleeves. I've never done this before so it was a trial and error for me... I used a seem ripper to remove the first sleeve from the shoulder area , but once I got it completely off I realized It was an odd shape and I had to cut it.  I simply cut the second sleeve off starting at the arm pit seem and cutting a straight line up. It was much faster and looked the same as the other one.



 This is what the sleeves looked like after I cut them off. You can see the raw edge where they were cut...it's not cute at all and honestly reminded me of 80's gym attire :) I sent a picture to my mom who suggested I do a blanket stitch on top to church it up a little. If you don't know how to do a blanket stitch, you can watch this tutorial here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXkSE2TTF4ss it is a very simple stitch and very cute. I picked a peachy color of embroidery floss that I already had.  Again, this was trial and error for me- I tried to do the blanket stitch on the raw edge and it just didn't look good at all. I found it was much easier and looked much nicer after I folded the edge over, pinned it in place and then did the blanket stitch. Once I finished the embroidery, I removed two of the buttons from the sweater and sewed them on with the embroidery floss. I was very happy with the outcome and hope the recipient of this gift will be too!


Now I've got to decide if I'm going to use the left over sweater for an ugly sweater party or attempt to make boot cuffs out of it. Every time I look at it I just wanna throw on a mullet wig and rock this at a party! 

Thanks for stopping by and if I don't post again before Christmas, then I hope you have a wonderful holiday surrounded by people you love. 


1 comment:

  1. What a great idea. I always hate throwing out a favorite sweater (because I get too many holes for some reason) and this would be the perfect solution.

    ReplyDelete