Upcycled Cashmere Sweater

This adorable bolero-style felted shrug began its life as one of my husband’s cashmere-wool sweaters.  After an unfortunate run-in with a naughty moth, it ended up in my recycle pile.  Since the moth holes were mostly in the body of the sweater, I though I could leave most of the upper section in tact and make a shrug.  I added a flower using a leftover piece of the sweater and scraps from two other sweaters.

Upcycled Fashion

Here’s what you need to to to make your own:

Materials

• Recycled wool sweater
• Wool yarn
• Large Needle
• Toggle Button
• Small Button (for flower center)
• Felt Scraps (for flower)

Directions

• Felt the wool sweater by putting through a cycle in the washing machine on hot.  Dry it in the dryer
• Turn the sweater inside out and try it on (this is so all your markings will be on the inside of the sweater and won’t be visible when you wear your finished shrug)
• Determine how long you want your shrug to be and mark the length
• Following the cutting lines in Figure 1, cut the sweater to the desired length and then cut straight up the middle (Use a ruler to make an even line before cutting)
• Draw a curve on one inner front of the sweater.  Cut one side.  Use a piece of paper to trace the curve.  Now copy the curve onto the other side.  This ensures that you have matching curves on both sides.  See Figure 2
• Using the blanket stitch, decoratively stitch around the raw edges of your sweater.  Threads magazine has good instructions on how to do a blanket stitch.
• You can now attach a toggle button and loop, if you’d like.  I think it would look nice without a button, too.
• Using the flower design in Figure 3 as a sample, cut out 3 different size 4 petal flowers out of felt scraps.  Set them on top of each other  with the largest on the bottom; stitch through all 3 layers; stitch on a decorative button and sew onto sweater.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Enjoy!

My Lovely Shrug!

If you’ve been watching the news, you know that those of us in Rhode Island have had our fair share of rain last week.

Spring Daffodil

Even though we got by relatively unscathed, it was still pretty weird to see your backyard turn into a swamp in a matter of hours.  Although the highways are open again, and most of the water has subsided, many of our neighbors are still draining their basements, and some friends are still waiting to get back into the house.  The ’silver lining’, so to speak, is that now everything is turning green and growing like crazy.  So, I thought it would be fun to write about our early gardening ventures and show some pics of all the great things getting a head start in the yard.

Last year, Jon built 5 raised beds in the yard and built a cloche over one of them.

Bacco and Max check out the sage and lavender

Typically, seeds packets advise you to wait until the last frost to plant outdoors, but we figured we could shave of 4-6 weeks by planting under the cloche.  So, as soon as we had a sunny weekend, we got started with our early spring crops.  The Demesne garden site has some good info on spring planting, and some fun ideas on companion planting.  In the end, a lot of what we ended up doing was based on trial and error.  A few things to note – most of the planting was done pre-flood, and you can’t get seeds in a straight row when a 4 year old is helping!

Spinach – the spinach was actually planted last fall and somehow managed to survive the winter as a little sprout.  When Jon put the cloche back up a few weeks ago, it really took off.  This is definitely a hearty plant!

Spinach Plant

Snow Peas – for some reason, I just love the way pea shoots look.  They are so cute!  These seeds were ones that I saved from the peas we grew last summer.  They sprouted in less than a week under the cloche and are growing well.  These are a great cool weather plant.

Snow Pea Shoots

Arugula – we always do really well with arugula.  These seeds were also from plants we grew last year that went to seed.  They sprouted in less than a week, and the ones in the cloche are growing very rapidly.  I hope to be eating arugula in a couple of weeks.  (As an experiment, I planted a few rows under the cloche and one row out in the open; the ones under the cloche are about 3 times as big).

Arugula

Kale – I never grew kale before, but heard it is a great cool weather crop.  It sprouted in a little over a week and already has its second set of leaves.

Kale

Carrots – These are supposedly a good cool weather crop.  Ours haven’t sprouted yet, but I’m still hopeful.

Garlic – You can’t go wrong with this herb.  Put them in the ground around Halloween, and don’t worry about them until August.  I planted cloves from one head of garlic last fall.  All of them sprouted over the winter and have been growing steadily.  We’ll have scapes early summer and 15-20 heads of garlic by the fall.  Yum!

Garlic

French Tarragon – I was told this plant couldn’t over winter in our zone.  I dug it up and put it in a pot, but accidentally left it outside all winter.  Much to my surprise, it totally came back!  I just moved it into its permanent home in one of the raised beds.  I guess it is pretty hardy after all.

French Tarragon

Sage – This is a very hardy plant.  It stayed out all winter, and its all ready getting full and bushy.

Parsley – Once again, I didn’t think this plant was a) a perennial, or b) could survive the winter.  Well, our parsley is alive and well!

Mint – What can I say about mint?  You can’t keep it down even with a steamroller.  Get ready for mint juleps!

Basil, Dill, Cilantro, Oregano – just put these seeds in this week.  The jury is out!  (although we always seem to do well with herbs)

Rhubarb – this is the second year we’ve had this perennial in our garden.  The roots were a transplant from my uncle’s and aunt’s garden in Maine.  They seem to be thriving!

Rhubarb

I can’t wait until we start picking and eating!  Happy spring, and happy gardening.

Azalea

OK, what did you guess?  I bet you didn’t guess baby wipes!  That’s right, these flowers are actually made from dried out (unused) diaper wipes.

Kanzashi Flower Bouquet

Kind of neat, huh?  Basically, these are baby wipes, dried, cut into squares, folded, and sewn together to make a flower.  The finished flower was then painted with food coloring and water.  The design is based on Kanzashi, the Japanese art of folding paper or fabric into intricate flowers, oftentimes to be used a hair jewelry.  As much as I’d love to, I can’t take credit for this adaptation.  My daughter wanted to make something herself to give to my mom for her birthday, and the Crafty Crow directed me to the instructions for these flowers on Filth Wizardry (a fun blog with lot’s of ideas to share with kids).  If you and your kids are interested in making your own flowers, you should check it out.  Filth Wizardry has very detailed instructions with great photos.  If we make these again, I think I’ll use more food coloring in our ‘paint’ to give a more intense color.

If you are interested in taking a more traditional approach and making fabric flowers, I found this tutorial on Instructibles which seems very straightforward.  If you are ready for the advanced session, you might want to check out this site by Jen Minnis.   She has alot of information and a picture of a gorgeous hairpiece she made.

Our Bouquet