Felted Sweater Jacket - Just in Time for Fall!

For those of you who’ve read my blog before, you probably know I have a penchant for making cool, new things out of upcycled, felted wool sweaters.  As a back-to-school gift to my daughter, I made her this fun felted jacket out of pieces left over from several felted sweater projects.  Of course, its just my luck that we’ve been enjoying 80 degree weather for the past few weeks, but I’m sure she’ll get a chance to wear it sometime before Thanksgiving!  I’ll admit, I did pack her into it one morning  on the way to bus, only to have her come home with it stuffed into the bottom of backpack, pink and sweating from another sweltering day.

Unfortunately, I didn’t put together a complete tutorial for this project, but I can give some pointers in case you are interested in trying something similar.  Here we go:

• Decide what sweater to use for the bodice AFTER you felt it.  I felted about a dozen sweaters to use for various projects.  As luck would have it, a women’ size L yellow sweater felted perfectly to fit a 6 year-old girl.    Since you never know how a sweater is going to felt, it is much easier to make ‘wardrobing’ decisions after they have been felted.
• Seams were sewn holding the pieces edge-to-edge and stitched with a zig-zag stitch.  Since the felted material doesn’t fray, there is no need to place the pieces wrong side together and make a folded seam.
• The flare around the bottom and the cuffs were made by cutting long, semi-circles of felted fabric.  Think of a really fat letter “C”.   When the center of the “C” is stitched to the bottom of the sweater, the outside of the “C” falls to form ruffled flare.
• This project works up fairly quickly, especially since felted material doesn’t fray, you don’t have to hem anything.
• The tulips are simply semi-circles of felted material with a long strip for a stem.  The button were hand-stitched on afterwards.
• The button loops are just small strips of felted sweater, fold in half, and machine stitched onto the front of the jacket.
• Don’t forget to take advantage of existing features of your sweater.  For example, the collar and front pocket were part of the original sweater.

Pieces from the sweater used in this jacket have also gone to make:

• 1 full size blanket (If I can take some pics, I’ll do a post!)
• 1 woman’s sweater tunic
• 1 woman’s bolero/shrug
• 6 small stuffed kitties (I hope to post a tutorial for these soon!)
• many, many hair accessories and brooches

Close-up of the Tulip Detail

Another View of my Upcycled Sweater Jacket

If you are looking for more upcycled sweater inspiration, check out Sweater Surgery by Stephanie Girard.  I love some of the ideas the book has to offer!

I’ve been a fan of Debbie Stoller’s Stitch and Bitch books for years.  Stitch and Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker was the very first crochet book that I bought when I first started crocheting about 8 years ago.

Felted Pansy and Fingerless Mitten

The patterns were fun & funky and the instructions were straightforward.  When I started knitting last year, I ran out and bought Stitch and Bitch: A Knitters Handbook.  So, of course, when I heard Debbie Stoller was coming out with a line of yarn, I couldn’t wait to test drive some myself.  Earlier this week, I grabbed a few of my Joann’s coupons and bought 4 skeins of the new Debbie Stoller Stitch Nation Yarn.   The new line features 3 kinds of yarn — Full o’Sheep, which is 100% wool, Bamboo Ewe which is a bamboo/wool blend, and Alpaca Love which is a wool/alpaca blend.  I started off with Full o’Sheep in Passionfruit, Plummy, Honeycomb and Thyme.

My take on the new yarn?  At $4.99 for 159 yards, it is a pretty good buy, especially if you use the ever forthcoming Joann’s coupons.   The colors are wonderful!  They are vibrant and super-saturated without coming off as brassy or ‘fakey’.  I love the colors!  The yarn is single-ply, which I’m not used to, but it has a nice feel to it, so I think I’ll like using it.  For my first quick project, I made a felted pansy, which you can see in the photo.  I only ran the flower through the wash once for felting.  The colors look great, but I think if I were making a bag or something bigger, I would run it through the wash once more for tighter felting.  I also used some of Honeycomb and Thyme to embroider details and trim on the fingerless mitten that’s in the picture.  (The base of the mitten is actually a recycled sweater).

Bottom line – this yarn is a big hit, and I can’t wait to try the alpaca and bamboo blends.  Now, if I can just find where I put the rest of those coupons that I printed out…