Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Christmas Craft #1: Felted wool sweater blanket

My family likes to make things. When we get together for Christmas, we usually have a large family project. In past years, we've done silk painting, soap making, jewelry making, book binding, and fishing pole making. This years' family project was handmade wooden marble runs, one for each sibling with children. More about this in an upcoming post.

We also have lots of individual projects going on during the holidays. This year I went 100% natural and 100% recycled using felted wool sweaters. After I saw this tutorial for a felted wool sweater blanket, I started collecting wool sweaters. I've fallen in love with Goodwill Outlets, where everything is sold by the pound! Once I had enough cream and gray sweaters, I made this:
It was my Christmas present to my family. We use it every day. And it probably cost me $5!

Fine print:
  • I straight-stitched all of the seams, then went over them with a wide zig-zag stitch. Some sweaters felted better than others, and I didn't want anything to unravel. 
  • I made sure that all the outside edges and corners had finished edges. Because of that, I didn't put a backing fabric on or do anything else to finish the edges. 
  • My blanket was made of 9" squares (except for two double-sized pieces): 6 blocks wide and 8 blocks high.

5 comments:

  1. SO cool!! I can't wait to try this out myself! Thanks for sharing :)

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  2. Just beautiful! I have a ton of old wool sweaters (originally intended for diaper wraps) that I've partially dug into. I had considered making a blanket, and this solidifies the idea. Now I must! Thanks for the lovely post!

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  3. I love this, but I'm so not crafty and it isn't something I'm about to take on. I wanted to "pin it" for pinterest so I could go back to it some day, but the site keeps telling me it can't find a picture in your post. Do you know why pinterest does recognize your blog?

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  4. I'm not sure why you're not able to pin it. It really was a simple project (simple in that it's easy to sew straight lines). But it is more time consuming because of the size. Once I had all the pieces cut out and arranged (and then labeled in order so I wouldn't get them mixed up), the sewing probably took 2-3 hours total.

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  5. This is an awesome idea, and boy i wish we had a thrift store that sold by the pound, that would be great

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