Vacuuming in high heels & pearls: Easy sweater refashion for spring

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Easy sweater refashion for spring

Last fall I purchased three plain 3/4-sleeve cardigans on clearance from Target with the idea that I would use stuff in my stash to refashion them. Here's what I did with the turquoise and the light green cardigans, which left the white one. I purchased the white one because I wanted to recreate this cardigan from White House Black Market:

and although I love it, I've never gotten around to it and at this point I know it's just not going to happen. So in the interest of just getting it done, I turned to another tutorial I have in my files that used a white cardigan: this 20-minute Spring sweater re-do from Jen at Tatertots and Jello.

I loved the way the bright colors of the buttons and the rickrack pop against the white sweater in Jen's version, but the only fat rickrack I had on hand was black, so I decided to go with it anyway. I followed Jen's tutorial and first removed the existing buttons, then pinned on the rickrack and sewed down the length of it.

I turned it under at the top and bottom but if I were doing it again, I wouldn't trim the end of the rickrack so close. Jumbo rickrack is woven and thus unravels badly and at the bottom you can see it peeking out. I attempted a fix with some Fray Check and fabric glue, but I wish I'd just left it longer to begin with.

I didn't have enough of the same size of covered button blanks, so I couldn't make cute covered buttons like Jen did. I do not have a shortage of buttons, however,

so I dug out a few of my favorite vintage plastic buttons and sewed those on instead. They were larger than the original buttons so they do not fit through the buttonholes, and I had to sew the sweater shut. That was a pain, but the cute buttons are worth it!

Sewing on all eight buttons took me longer than 20 minutes, but the rickrack part was a breeze. I wore my new sweater yesterday and the rainbow of vintage buttons made me so happy!