I bought a great, tightly knit chenille sweater from Goodwill, sewed it into a square, cut off the extra pieces, and made a cute pillow for the Weeping Princess.
Very exciting! But now I want to make other stuff. Any ideas? (I saved the arms of the sweater, thinking if nothing else, I’ll sew up a pillow for the puppy.)
How about some sort of bag?
With the sleeves maybe a make-up bag? How about a wine bottle cover?
You could make… a little sweater.
Octopus warmer?
I was also going to say wine-bottle holder. Also a tea cozy?
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[li]Cat/dog pillow[/li][li]Small decorative people pillow[/li][li]Sew one end. Fill with uncooked rice. Sew other end. Microwave for 2-3 minutes for a very nice neckwarmer/handwarmer/heating pad thingy. (Sweater must be a tight knit for this to work.)[/li]
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For a weiner dog puppy!
Build a water garden with a vinyl liner.
Use sweaters under the liner instead of old carpet to protect it from sharp rocks.
I saw a TV program once where they made a rug out of used sweaters. Didn’t turn out that well, but they were kinda in a rush (yes, one of those shows).
A brooch? A pteradactyl?
How about trivets? Start a patchwork quilt?
I was gonna say rug too. My grandma used to collect all our worn out clothes and make braided rugs with them. I can remember being thrilled because I could see a bit of the Flintstone PJs that made it into one of them.
You’re so crafty, bodypoet, I bet you could whip off one of those in a minute. They also have the bonus of not looking like a re-used item so much.
Here’s a set of instructions I found.
http://wi.essortment.com/braidedragrugs_rjmn.htm
They make little sense to me, but I’m not a crafty guy. Unless you count cooking. Today i got the urge to make Christmas cookies and so I made:
six dozen oatmeal crisps
three dozen best effin brownies in the whole world
six dozen cardamom thins
two dozen pinenut macaroons
five dozen hazelnut uglybutgoods
five dozen chocolate hazelnut uglybutgoods
anna big pot of roasted butternut squash soup with leeks and curry. I had some amaretto cookies lying around so I threw those in too. I’m bragging. I’ll stop now.
Once I saw Christmas ornaments made out of old sweaters. Sew two layers in the shape of a little mitten then decorate however you want. The edges were sewn with wrong sides together and not turned when finished. Maybe because the mittens were so small it would have turned out lumpy if sewn the regular way.
I just made a warm fuzzy hat with cat ears on it out of an old sweater.
But my favorite trick is to take a turtleneck and cut off the neck. Sew up the ragged end, tie off the corners to look like cute ears, and call it a hat. Now cut off the arms and cut a thumbhole in each. Now they are armwarmers. Finally, cut the rest in to strips, sew them end-on-end and you’ve got a matching scarf.
Some folks buy used sweaters and unravel them and re-use the yarn. Sometimes it’s more trouble than it’s worth.
If you have a feltable wool sweater, you could make coasters. In some of the trendy knit magazines, folks are knitting cell-phone bags. You could stitch up a little bag out of one of the sleeves and put a chain or cord on it for a strap.
Tea cosy
Make a strip just big enough to go around your favorite hot beverage cup and you don’t have to worry about using those dumb cardboard things anymore.
Make a long tube (put 2 sleeves together, maybe), fill it with rice or beans and use it as a draft excluder
Eye pillow
You might be able to stitch larger ones into caps or hats
I second the heating bag suggestion. Sew one end shut, sew velcro on the other end. Take some lightweight cotton and sew a pillow of a size to fit into the sleeve, and fill it about halfway or a little more with feed corn or deer corn. Nuke the pillow with some paper towels a few times to get rid of excess moisture, then slide it into the sleeve. Voila, a heating bag with a removable, washable cover that’s just the right size and shape to go around your neck or behind your back.
(The site I found says that corn stays cleaner longer than rice or wheat, and deer corn is cheaper than rice. If you’re going to use deer corn, though, this is the time of year to get it. It’s harder to find outside of deer season. And I like the removable cover because you get skin oils on the fabric and after a while it gets ooky.)
Around my house we call these “draft dodgers”, but they go by other names.
Sew the tubes making up the empty sleeves end to end to form one long tube.
Sew one end shut.
Fill tube with something like aquarium gravel - I’ve people use beans, and all sorts of things, but you want a combination of some weight and peices too big to fall out of the knit fabric.
Sew the open end shut.
Place along bottoms of outside doors to block drafts from coming inside. When the door opens, it moves aside (and helps soak up dampness, which, if you use beans, can lead to sprouting and a chia draft dodger). When you shut the door, kick it back into place.
-You can make leg warmers, or weird lookin’ socks, easily from the sleeves[if you have a serger this goes really quickly]
-Open out the body of a cut-up sweater and quilt it[surprise idea, huh?] to a foundation fabric. Then make a tote bag, fanny pack, knapsack, vest etc.
-Make a watch cap. Cut a rectangle long enough to encircle your head. Seam the two shorter ends together. Gather one long side and pull it tight to form a peak, adjust the gathers to conform to the shape of your head and secure the stitches.
::Use it up, wear it out, make do or do without::