Recontructed Sweater to a Shrug Tutorial

I'm going to a wedding reception next week that is in the evening and outdoors. I bought a beautiful dress, which is sleeveless, so I know I'm going to be cold. I had to come up with something that I could wear over the dress to give me some warmth. I wanted to make a little shrug, nothing with sleeves and something I could easily remove. I really enjoyed the last sweater reconstructed project I did ( http://bonnindesigns.blogspot.com/2008/11/remake-of-boring-cardigan-sweater.html ) and I really wanted to try my hand at something else. So off to the thrift store I went.

I purchased a lambswool neutral zip cardigan for $6 and went to work. When I purchased it, I realized that someone probably accidently washed the sweater and shrunk it so it was pre-felted for me. Cool, less work. Using the seam ripper, I removed the zipper and found that there were 2 strips of sweater that covered the zipper which later became the ties for the shrug. To make the shrug, the top of the sweater will be the bottom of the shrug, and the bottom of the sweater will be folded over to make a wide neck for the shrug.

I continued with the seam ripper and on the inside of the sweater, removed the stitching that held the sleeves on. I removed the sleeves and ended up with some nice holes that I could easily crochet and edging through.

I had this lambswool sweater vest since high school and it had a stain, so I felted it in the washer to tighten the stitching and began cutting circles of graduating sizes for flowers and leaf shapes.

So turning the sweater upside down and folding over what was the bottom of the sweater, which is now the neckline, I positioned and pinned my graduating size circles to make flowers and my leaves.

I stitched the leaves on using a basting stitch which I pulled tight a little to give the leaves dimension.

Next, the flowers were stitched in place using a crystal bead and hot pink sewing thread doubled onto a beading needle.

I originally used a bulky yarn to do the edging on the sweater in single crochet. I liked the yarn because it had all of the colors of the dress in it, but when I completed it, the results were to bulky and too 'hippy braidy' looking so I decided instead to use a neutral thinner yarn somewhat matching the sweater. It turned out much better.

This is the end result - with a row of double crochet and then a shell edging only in the back. I wanted to increase the back length a bit.

The sleeve part was done in single crochet. the front edging done in double crochet. The ties are the extra sweater zip portion folded over and stitched on with double thickness leaves sewn on.

I promise to show a picture of the shrug with the dress, but I was so excited to finally finish the shrug, I wanted to share it.