Sweater Refashion Extravaganza!

Yes, this title sounds familiar... Some of you might remember my T-Shirt Refashion Extravaganza from last summer. Now, half a year later, it's time to do the same thing with my sweaters. Here is my first transformation:

It always blows my mind how many things I have in my closet, yet I don't wear much of it regularly. So I take a really honest look at it and try to figure out why. Then, things land in my refashion bin...;-) A bunch of sweaters had gathered, so another refashion extravaganza was called for!

All knits, lighter, heavier, from my hubby, from my own knitting...

 For the first project, a knit dress, I chose these three items:

A white short-sleeve knit jacket, which I ended up not using..., a red sweater from my husband, which had a little hole at the shoulder, and an oversized striped vest, which could look really cool on a very tall, slim model, with really tight clothes underneath. On me, it looked horrific!

Good for a laugh, but not worth taking up space in my closet! :-)
I played around with the items on my dress form and decided to use the bottom of the red sweater right under my bust (you can see the sleeves hanging down, I had not cut it apart yet at this point):

I copied down the pattern from a knit dress I own and love, and cut apart the vest:

The top of the vest didn't have quite enough fabric around the shoulders to be turned into the top of the dress. Also, the armholes were way too big:

So I had to move the shoulder seams down a bit - which also took care of the width of the armholes - and resew the neck:

Now I shaped the side seams of my top the way I desired (I used my serger for all the seams)

...and my top part was taken care of! And all that was left to do was to adjust the width of the skirt according to the pattern and attach the red sweater to the other two pieces.

 DONE!

Oh, I also sewed a stripe of red fabric to the sleeves, to round off the look.

This was a super quick and easy project and I love how it turned out.

The dress is a perfect combination of comfortable yet flattering - the width is  just a touch loose, so I don't feel like I need to pull in my belly, yet not anywhere near as oversized as this vest used to be in it's previous life...:-)

The red hubby sweater gets featured again in my next two refashions - I really don't think you can get more out of one single piece of old clothing! Here is a sneak peak, to be posted soon!

Have fun recycling and stay warm!
Best,
Katja