Monday, December 5, 2011

How to make a recycled sweater with a peppermint candy style bow wreath

My first Christmas wreath of the season. If the wind keeps up here and I have to keep picking up tree dabris it might just be the only one! But it sure came out cute.
I was inspired by this post over at Fave Crafts Blog where there was a sock craft roundup. One of the projects was a wreath made of socks that was adorable! Well as the mistress of sweater surgery my go to material is the almighty sweater so off to the sweater stash!
While not a conventional Christmas color combo I thought this striped sweater would look kinda cool.
How I made my recycled wool felted sweater wreath;

I cut the sleeves off the sweater and up the seam.
I simply whip stitched the sweater strips onto a Styrofoam wreath base. The stitches don't show so it doesn't matter what they look like! I wanted it to be a little more scrunchy so I cut another strip of the sweater from the back as well. So in total it was 3 sections.
To make the candy style bow. I cut 2 strips of the stripes. One was 3 wide with the dark color on the outside and one was 3 stripes wide with the dark stripe on the inside with the two light blue on the outside. Then I folded them in half and coiled them up. This made the center candy part.
To make the "wrapper" side pieces I cut the ribbing section from the base of the sweater and did a running (gather) stitch. I bit of hot glue was used to attach them to the sides of the candy and then onto the wreath.

4 comments:

Barbra said...

Wow...super idea! Love it!

DaCraftyLady said...

Wow what a great project, and if we made it in red and green it would really be a Christmas treasure, I love the swirls and how you put it all together, it is one way to lengthen our need for our old sweaters, great idea!!!!

Eileen The Artful Crafter said...

That is sooo elegant, Stefanie.

You're really on a creative roll. I love the Christmas tree you made from flower shapes last week and also the cone trees I see today in the thumbnail links below the post.

Is there a holiday sweater surgery book in the works?

Cindy said...

I've got some sweaters that I picked up at a thrift store just so I could repurpose them like you've done. I think I'm going to have to give this wreath a try! Thank you for the tutorial.

Hugs XX
Barbara

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