Tutorial Tuesday - Simple Sweater Hat by Nancy's Couture

Today's tutorial is from Nancy Couture's blog (Thanks, Nancy!!!), and is one of the easiest recycled wool projects i've seen in a while! Here is the one I made, following her instructions, and it literally took only minutes to make! I swear my husband just happened to be wearing that shirt, and didn't put it on just to match the hat ;)


Ready to make your own? Head on over to Nancy's Couture tutorial!!

Sale! Sale! Sale!

I have reached 400 followers on my blog, so it is time for a sale! Let's do this in 4's since it's 400.

Buy 4 sweaters, get one free (of equal or lesser value)! If you buy 8, you get 2 free, buy 12, you get get 3 free etc.

Blankets are all $4 off!

This sale applies to sweaters not yet listed as well, so if you are looking for something specific let me know!

To take advantage of this sale, just check out through Artfire, but stop when it tries to redirect you to Paypal. At this point, contact me with the email address to send your revised invoice to, and your sale prices will be reflected on the invoice.

Sale ends at midnight (central time) on Wednesday, December 1st, so hurry!

Get fantastic art for a bargain price! Small Business Saturday!

Do you have an American Express card? If so, head over HERE and sign up to get a $25 credit when you spend $25 or more on small businesses... today only! Not sure where to spend that $25? Go go my friend Jen's website!

From Jen:

"Hi everyone! Jennifer Edgley Paintings qualifies for this. Spend $25 or more (with your registered AmEx card) on my artwork and American Express will give you a $25 credit on your next statement. That would make 2 of my $15 notecard packs $5! What a great holiday gift!"

This is Jen, holding the painting I bought from her at one of her shows. Isn't it fantastic?

Something you won't find at my craft shows

You see the finished products & the tutorials I post here. They are finished, and look good, right? Good ideas, and pretty products? Now what you don't see is my "mistake pile" next to my sewing machine, that is almost as tall as my sewing machine, that is awaiting some quality time with a seam ripper. What you also don't see is the great ideas that weren't so great after all. I made what I was going to call "oven mitt-ens", basically a large thick mitten, like my regular mittens, but with more arm coverage. I thought it would be cute, and something different than the same old oven mitts. Great idea, right? So I make the pattern, make the tester prototype, and i'm using it to get a pizza out of the oven. It's working great, so i'm feeling happy about my cool new oven mitt. Then I go to switch hands to hold the pan with my left hand, so I can cut the pizza with my right. That's when I realized it was hand specific, and could only wear it on the right hand.

I'll still use it (when nobody else is around), but I won't be making any more "oven mitt-ens"!

What I've Been Working on Wednesday

Meet Victoria Marie, the newest member of the Resweater family! I made a beret hat from the circles that are left over from making the adult sized berets (tutorial here), and it was the perfect size for an American Girl doll, or other 18" dolls (Victoria is an Our Generation doll), so I am going to make some girl/doll sets of hats. Hopefully i'll have some time this week to make some!

Last week my mom gave me some custom orders for some friends of hers, so i've been busy making those. I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out :)




So, what have you been working on? Feel free to post pictures of your finished projects on my FB page!

Tutorial Tuesday - Recycled Wool Cardigan Hat!

Please excuse my lousy lighting self portrait above. I assure you the hats look much better in real life! This hat was inspired by this fab tutorial, but alas, I am lazy and decided there had to be an easier way! Are you ready for the Resweater lazy version? ;)

Step 1 is to find a felted wool, or cashmere, cardigan with buttons down the middle. I know a cool place you can get one, if you don't have a cardigan to work with ;)



Next, I sewed a little between each button, just so it wouldn't gap open. I used a contrasting thread to show you, but it's still a little hard to see... sorry about that.


Next, Cut the biggest circle that your sweater will allow. The bigger the sweater, the bigger the circle (the sweater I used was a women's medium for a reference).


Now take a piece of very stretchy felted ribbing, and cut it to fit your head the way you want it to. It can be the ribbing from the sweater you cut the circle from, or you can take some from another sweater like I did. I like the contrast.


Sew your ribbing into a loop. I used my new machine's fancy stitch to get a flat seam (love it!).


Sew your the unfinished edge of your ribbing to the edge of your circle, wrong sides out, s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g the ribbing (not the circle!) as you go. I can stretch evenly as I go freehand, but if you are not sure, you can pin it at different parts, so you know if you are stretching enough or too much. Now turn it right side out & you are done!

Because of the stretchiness of the ribbing, these hats will fit both children & adults. A word of caution: Boys don't like to model girl hats.

Jack's Christmas present - Kangamonster pillow

This came out exactly how I wanted it to, so I am thrilled! I call him Kangamonster, because his mouth is a pouch (kangaroo). I made this for Jack, because he likes to take toys into bed with him, but doesn't like to bring his smaller toys, like action figures, with him. He's afraid they'll get stuck somewhere or fall off the bed. Now he can stick them in Kangamonster's mouth where they will be safe until the morning... unless Kangamonster is hungry!

Off Topic Thursday - coupons & Swagbucks!

Part of what lets me stay at home with my son is being very frugal. My husband was laid off last year, and if we hadn't been frugal all along, it it would have been devastating. He got hired back, and things got back to "normal" quickly, but it was even more of a reminder to secure our future. Money saved is money earned! I coupon shop, and look for ways to save & earn money. Some of you are familiar with Swagbucks, but if you aren't, I highly recommend reading this post, and signing up through my link in the sidebar (so I get credit too!)! I have earned $100 in Amazon gift cards, since I signed up, less than a year ago.

Those who are familiar with Swagbucks... they are now giving out Swagbucks for using coupons!!! On the Swagbucks home page, if you click on "coupons", the same coupons that are on Coupons.com will pop up. The difference is, that if you print them and use them, you will get Swagbucks for each coupon used! I will be getting lots of Amazon gift cards this year!

To make things even better, If you go to the Swagbucks home page & click on "Daily Deals", you can purchse your Groupons (special deals in your area... I buy them weekly!) through them to earn more Swagbucks. Today's Groupon for me was $25 for an Oil Change, Tire Rotation, Wiper Blades, Battery Check, and Inspection, that I gladly bought (I am due for an oil change, tire rotation, and new wiper blades). This also earned me 280 Swagbucks (more than half of what I need to get a $5 Amazon gift card!)!

Can I get your opinions? Does this post seem spammy, or would you like to hear about money saving things like this occasionally?

What I've Been Working on Wednesday

This week I haven't been doing a whole lot of sewing, because i've been trying to get to all the housework that I neglected over the last month or so due to my craft shows. I did manage to make a few dryer balls, since most of it is done by hand, and it's a good in-front-of-the-tv craft (I can't watch tv without working on something). If you are interested in any of my dryer balls, they can be purchased here, or if you prefer to make them my explaination is here.

I also made 2 hats to test the new sewing machine...


Though I love my old Singer, i'm glad that my hat band seams will now look like this...


instead of this...


What have you been working on this past week? Feel free to brag about your latest project, or promote your shop on my Facebook page!

Tutorial Tuesday - patching ripped jeans

I got a new sewing machine, a Baby Lock BL9, and I am trying out some of the cool features on it that I don't have on my antique Singer. I love, and will always keep my Singer, but this Baby Lock is fun to play with!

One of the features is zig zag & fun stitches, like these:


Now, i'm sure that this has been done before, one version of it or another, and i've probably seen it on a craft website before. I would love to give credit, but can't remember, so please let me know if you've blogged something like this & i'll link to you.

Ok, this is dedicated to all the moms out there with 5 year old boys & up! Jack's Jeans' knees were pristine, until he hit 5, and now he gets a hole in the knee every other week. Sometimes being green is just taking care of, and fixing, what you already have, so it lasts longer. Even after my son outgrows these, they are more likely to be worn again because they are "fixed", rather than be thrown away because they have a hole.

Ready? You will need a hole in the knee, and a scrap of soft felted wool or cashmere (what I used) that is a little bigger than the hole.


Now, seam rip an opening on the outside seam of your jeans big enough for you to comfortably sew.


Place your scrap on the inside of the jeans, and zig zag or funky stitch (I don't know the name of it, but I used the bottom "D" stitch, pictured above) all over the hole, holding the hole closed as best as you can. Now, turn the jeans inside out & sew up the seam you seam ripped, and you are done! Now you have the "destroyed" look that clothing stores charge more for! You can actually cut the jeans and do this all over, if you want that trendy look. I think it looks cute!

I like how this pair came out (please ignore the grass stains... i'll get those out later today)...

... and it went well with the overall "destroyed" look of those particular jeans...


On these, I wish I would have used a closer matching color, because the hole in this knee was bigger than the other pair, so the cashmere peeked through a little. I also could have used slightly darker thread to make it look better (I used light gray).


Overall, a quick, easy, and useful project! Jack's knees will stay warm this winter ;)

And the winner of the Resweater giveway is....

... according to random.org... #22!

"Celeste said...

I follow your blog."

Congratulations, Celeste! You didn't leave an email, so please contact me!

As for Sweater Sunday... I am just exhausted from a full weekend, so please forgive me, but i'll be posting Sweater Sunday tomorrow instead.

Welcome to Resweater!

If this looks familiar to you, then you were at the Geneva High School craft show today! Welcome to my blog, and feel free to ask any questions!

What i've Been Working on Wednesday - Jacket for Jack

I'm sorry I skipped Tutorial Tuesday yesterday, but i've been so busy. This Saturday is my last craft show, and things will go back to normal, or normal as they can be with me around ;), and I will post a tutorial next week. It might even be a guest tutorial! Anyhow, I haven't had the time to take pictures of all i've worked on this week, and you wouldn't want to see them in their current unironed state anyway, so I thought i'd show off the jacket I made Jack last week. This is one of those things that I wasn't planning on making, but it begged to be made. This project totally reminded me of the really cool boys' stuff that Victoria makes. I had a felted merino sweater, and it was just the right size for Jack, with a little room to grow. It was a little wide, so I just took in the sides a little, like I did with my cardigan. That was all I was planning to do, but it looked a little plain, so I added the hood (just traced a hood and used that as a pattern). I thought it would look cooler with a layer look, so I just sewed a strip of the same wool I used for the hood along the bottom. Now I was pretty pleased with it, but Jack said he needed a zipper... he hates pullovers. I dug through my scraps, found a zipper, cut straight down the middle of the sweater, and sewed on the zipper. I liked the look of it better when it was a pullover, but Jack likes it better now. The bonus is that my easily overheated son wore this all day, inside & out, hot & cold, and never felt hot or cold. Dang, I love wool!

Resweater giveaway - hat or sweater!

I am so sorry i've been neglecting my blog, (and will be until after my show on Saturday) so I decided to have a giveaway in the meantime! I will be giving away any 1 sweater from my shop (or even in my inventory, if you have a specific color in mind that I don't have listed), or one of my funky hats (pick from what I have or i'll make one in your favorite colors)... your choice!

Ready for the details?

Mandatory Entry:
* Tell me what your favorite recycled wool things are!
Want extra entries?
* Follow my blog, and if you already do just say that.
* Blog about this giveaway & link to it.


Make sure to leave a separate comment for the entries you complete!

Deadline: Sunday, November 14th at midnight, Central time zone. I will use random.org to pick the winners the following morning (November 15th). **please leave an email if your blogger profile does not include it or you don't have a blog. I need a way to contact you.** Once a winner is drawn I will contact them and the winner will have 48 hours to reply back before I draw a new winner.

Good luck!

What i've Been Working on Wednesday

I've been doing tons of sewing & cutting, and will be doing more this week, in anticipation of my local craft shows coming up. Here's what I have completed:

The lone hat (I cut pieces for oodles of hats, but just haven't started the actual sewing yet)...


the merino runner's mittens...



the cashmere mittens...


the wool & wool blend mittens...


I apologize in advance if I don't post much over the next 2 weeks, but I will be busy with the craft shows. I'll do the best I can :) Feel free to post what you have been working on, on my Facebook page... i'd love to see it!