Dare to Make It: Holiday
How to Make an Embellished Blanket with Recycled Sweaters
October 9th, 2008 in sewing, patterns & designs, gifts, embroidery, quilting
Lee Meredith, contributor
20 users recommend
A functional work of art is the best kind of gift!
Photo: Lee Meredith
In all genres of my crafting, I like to use recycled materials whenever possible, and thrifted sweaters are definitely one of my favorites to work with. So I'm going to show you how to take pieces of wool and make them into a one-of-a-kind blanket, personalized with embellishments for the lucky recipient. If you need to go thrift-store hunting for the sweaters and you want to put a lot into the embellishing, you'll need to get started on this project right away to have it done for a holiday gift!
You'll need:
- An assortment of wool sweaters
- Scissors
- Sewing machine and lots of thread
- Your choice of embellishment materials—embroidery floss, scrap yarn, fabric for appliqué, fabric paint, etc.
- Either a separate large piece of fabric for the back, or enough sweater felt for double the area of your blanket
- Some scrap yarn
- Tapestry needle or large sewing needle
First, you'll need to find and felt your sweaters. When shopping at thrift stores, look for 100% wool or wool blends with other natural fibers (not cotton or acrylic, which won't felt). Don't worry about holes or rips because you're cutting them up anyway, and the bigger the better for maximum fabric yardage. Now just machine-wash them on a regular hot or warm setting, and dry them on a hot setting. When you're done, they should be shrunken and thicker so when you cut the fabric it will not unravel. (Diane Gilleland wrote a detailed felting how-to for CraftStylish.)
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A variety of sweater colors and textures will make for an interesting finished blanket. |
Next, cut the sweaters into blocks to make up your blanket. Cut a variety of sizes and shapes, avoiding ribbed edges that want to scrunch up. Once you think you have enough, lay them all out on the floor and arrange them so they fit together—you'll probably need to cut some smaller to match up or cut more pieces to fill gaps. Keep it visually balanced, with large and small blocks evenly distributed and color/texture variation even throughout.
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Since the wool will stretch, edge lengths don't need to be exactly the same—you can stretch them to match up when sewing. |
Now it's time to embellish those blocks! This is where your personal creativity can shine and you can use whatever techniques you're best at or new ones you've been wanting to try out! Here are some CraftStylish tutorials that might help: reverse appliqué by Diane Gilleland, reverse appliqué by Jennifer Stern, five handy embroidery stitches by Erika Kern, and appliqué inspiration by Kayte Terry.
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You can embroider onto felted wool either with regular embroidery floss or with yarn for a different look. |
I love to use recycled T-shirt pieces to make simple appliqués on felted sweater wool. On my blanket, I did several basic shape appliqués with T-shirt fabric and other recycled fabric scraps, all attached to the wool with embroidery floss stitching, embroidery with floss and with handspun yarn, and some stamping with fabric ink onto the T-shirt fabric. All of my embellishments are based on memories and inside jokes that I share with the gift recipient (my fiance).
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Be sure to embellish each block one at a time, placing them back in their spots when you're done so you don't forget how to piece the blocks back together. |
Now you can start sewing the blocks together. Using a zigzag stitch, attach the sides of pieces that are the same length, which will probably be the smaller pieces. Pin the edges together, right sides facing, stretching as needed so they line up evenly. Then as you sew (trying not to stretch too much, unless you don't have a zigzag stitch, in which case you'll want to stretch a bit), make sure you keep the two pieces even so the edges match up.
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The orange lines show where the seams are being sewn for the first batch of blocks. |
Once you've sewn the smaller pieces together, those now act as bigger blocks. You'll repeat sewing together blocks with edges of the same length, forming a new set of bigger blocks.
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After a couple rounds of sewing, the orange lines are around each of the larger blocks. |
Keep repeating until your blanket is whole. Depending on your particular block shapes, the sewing step might be a little different for you—basically, you just need to sew the blocks together in whatever order makes sense to you.
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If your blanket has uneven or messy edges or seams, don't worry—everything will get evened out in the end. |
Now prepare your back fabric. I used a non-stretchy woven fabric, which was a bad idea; learning from my mistakes, I recommend that you use a knit fabric of some kind, with some stretch. Cut the fabric as big as your blanket, sewing pieces together if needed.
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My zebra print fabric used to be a bean bag chair cover—yay, recycling! |
Next, pin the two blanket halves together, right sides facing, keeping the edges lined up. Sew around all four sides, leaving a hole about a foot long on one edge for turning it right side out.
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My hole didn't need to be as long as it was; you just need enough room to pull the fabric through. |
Turn the blanket right side out and sew up the hole, turning the edges under, and continue sewing all the way around the edge of the whole blanket, creating a neater edge.
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Because my sweater fabric was stretchy and my back fabric was not, my blanket pulled in when sewn together, which is why I think a knit fabric will work better for the back. |
The blanket is just about done, and you might be able to skip this next step if everything looks good already. But what I did next was block, as you'd do to a knit object. To block the blanket, I put another blanket down on the floor, and I held that blanket flat by placing heavy books around the edges. I pinned my blanket onto it all around the edges, pulling it straight and even. Then I sprayed the blanket with water until it was pretty wet.
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Let the blanket fully dry, probably overnight, before taking the pins out for the final step. |
The last step is to attach the front and back pieces to each other throughout the blanket, so it's more like a quilt and less like an unstuffed pillow. If you are a quilter, you can do your own thing with this part, but I kept it simple. I took yarn scraps (recycled unraveled sweater wool!) and a big sewing needle and stitched little knots evenly throughout the blanket. Stitch through both layers from the top, then come back up just a fraction of an inch over.
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Be sure the blanket is lying flat and even when joining the layers. |
Tie a super-tight square knot, and trim the yarn to about a half-inch. Repeat all over the blanket. You could add a little extra interest by using different-colored yarn scraps!
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I did a gridlike pattern with the ties, but you could go crazy and put the knots in randomly or in a swirl design or whatever you can think of! |
Now give it to someone who likes to snuggle up in cozy wool in the cold winter months!
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A functional work of art is the best kind of gift! |
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