Day 116 - Sweater Pants

A few years ago one of my gorgeous (70 plus year old) neighbours at the time gave me a hand knitted sweater for my son Liam. It was a gorgeous cable knit but was basically unwearable. The shape was short and wide and the arms were outrageously long.
Because she has knitted it I didn't want to give it away, so I have held onto it for years. Today was the day for it's transformation.

I think these sweater pants turned out out absolutely adorable and I will be making something with the middle section of the jumper too. Here is a look at how to make them - so, so simple.

Here is the starting point.

First step is to cut off the arms.

Second step was to cut down the inside seems of the two arms about 10cm to create the crotch.
You can measure this using a pair of pants you already have and adding a couple of cm's to create the elastic casing later.

Then you turn one arm inside out and put the right side out arm inside the other one, matching the newly cut sections. Now sew these raw edges up and it will look like this.

The wool can be quite thick to sew so I then overlocked (serged) the top edge and then turned it over once to create an elastic casing. Then I added the elastic.

Here's the result. Just adorable. These are slightly too long so I have rolled the cuffs up. I love them.

 

Day 59 - How to make bunting - easy.

I made some bunting today for a birthday coming up in our house next week.

Here's how you make it. You can use up lots of fabric scraps

Firstly cut your triangles to whatever size you would like to make your bunting. Mine are 30cm on one slightly longer side and about 28cm on the other two sides.

Next, sew them up on the two shorter sides, leaving the bottom open. Turn right side out and use a chopstick or something pointy to poke out the point and the end.

You don't need to worry about being too neat with the ends and raw edge because it will be hidden anyway.

Press the triangles with a hot iron and then top stitch along the two sewn sides nice and close to the edge. I used a red thread for contrast.

Next I just use some bias binding to hang them off.

Fold and iron the bias binding in half along it's length and then slip the triangles between the two layers and pin in place. I like to leave a little gap between each triangle. The spacing depends on personal taste.

 Sew along the whole length of the binding. Mine was a 3m length.

Here they are hanging up - I made the pink ones a couple of years ago for my daughter's birthday.