Adventures in Dressmaking::Sweater Refashion-Pom Poms and Peplums!

Hello, Blogger friends! A great new friend of mine, Suzannah, has this blog called Adventures in Dressmaking. Perhaps you've heard of it? Well, as it so happens, I'm going to be guest posting over there for a while!

Adventures in Dressmaking is a wonderful blog. Suzannah is an extremely talented seamstress and shares her trials and inspirations as she works through a pattern, giving you pointers along the way! I'm so flattered to be joining her.

Here are some of my favorite projects of hers:

So Jackie O...I really love this dress!






Click on over and join in on the fun!





I've had this sweater for years. My husband actually got it for me for Christmas one year, before he was even my husband. Now two kids later it was still hanging in my closet. The sweater was soft but just didn't have the same allure it seemed to have when I first lifted it from the gift box.

The sweater was a bit too short so I thought a peplum would give it some color. To give it even more panache, I decided to add elbow pads and pom poms! This sweater is super fun to wear and comfy with a pair of yoga pants at home. I love that scraps can make an old sweater beautiful-and as a bonus, get me out of pjs!





The first thing I did was cut a 3" strip from some shirting fabric. I measured the perimeter of the bottom of the sweater and a little less than doubled that. I serged the ends of the shirting fabric and then sewed the ends together to form a loop. Then I ran a basting stitch to gather the top of the peplum.



I Measured 3/4" up from the bottom of the sweater and drew a line so that it was an easy guide to pin the sweater to. After adjusting the gather I sewed the peplum to the bottom of the sweater.



For the elbow patches, I cut ovals of wool felt and hand stitched them into place. I suggest pinning them on and trying the sweater on first to check the placement. I did make sure to measure up from the cuff to the bottom of the patch on each sleeve to make sure they were even.



For the hood, I ran my chunky yarn through the old casing with the aid of a safety pin. I left the ends extra long so that I had plenty to tie onto the pom poms. I thought big pom poms would be super fun so I wrapped the yarn around 4 fingers and probably went around 50 times. (here is a great tutorial on making pom poms) That's it!

Can't not have a jumping photo with bouncy pom poms!