Altered Sweatshirt...Finished

Progress on the sweatshirt was interrupted by my neighbor calling to say, "We're picking grapes down here. You want to come down and get some?"
Well, yes.
Three of the tastiest batches of grape jelly ever made ensued....with much more juice in the freezer for more jelly later in the year.

But the sweatshirt is officially done as of this morning. Summerset Banks, the art clothing maker extraordinaire, gave me a great suggestion for making the sweatshirt fit better...four vertical tucks in the front and in the back, which were easy to pin and sew by hand.

Here is the front...

No dear friends, I am not going to model it! It does fit fine, though.

And the back...theose dahlias stayed with me and suggested this circular lay-out over the amorphous felting I had put down. The button in the center matches the button on the front used for my closure.

My final thoughts on this experience are these:
--It was a great challenge to see what I could make from a simple $5 sweatshirt. We are all going to need to do more with less over the next few years is my prediction, and this kind of project fills the need to have lots of sewing fun for little money.
--There was no pre-planning involved. I just winged it with the colors and materials I liked to see where the design would take me. A cheap sweatshirt gave me "permission" to do this, but I would recommend a solid plan if a more expensive garment or fabric is involved.
--I am just not an art garment person. This sweatshirt is so flashy and outside of my comfort zone it will be very hard for me to wear it! I will try, though.

Meanwhile...I thought you'd enjoy seeing this bounty get transformed...

Thirty-five pounds of Concord grapes here...

...de-stemmed, squished, and simmering...

...and ready for toast with peanut butter. So, so yummy.

Now I think I'll clear my head and do some piecing, just for the heck of it! Who knows what kind of trouble that will lead to next.....

Altered Sweatshirt...Day 3

Filling in the second half of the front of the sweatshirt and adding some more detail is starting to pull it all together for me.

I don't want the look to be "folksy" but I'm not going for an "artsy" effect either. Really I am just responding to the fall season...and the great leaves and flowers that are still among us.

Dahlias! They put on such a great show in October around here, a flaming good-bye to summer right up until frost. These grow along a protected side of my house where they get lots of afternoon sun...I may have them into November. I hope so!


This sweatshirt front is getting there...the felting on the back is pretty wild and will be my next focus.

If you click on the picture above, you can see the bead-like knots I made at the base of each spiral.

I used a fat needle and some wide rayon ribbon that my friend Freda Butler sent to me.

So if you don't have the right size and color of bead that you want, you can make a pretty good substitute!

The sweatshirt has a boxy fit that I am not crazy about (and which my sister said I should never wear...sisters know these things better than we do.) I'm going to play with making some alterations to the fit after the embellishment is done....

Altered Sweatshirt...Day 2

This project is taking me along for a ride!


To make some applique leaves, I felted some silk fibers on water-soluble stabilizer.

I laid out the leaves....

And then I sewed them down...on the right side so far.
All these squiggles and beads started showing up, though. For some reason this is hard to photograph, but if you click on the picture you should be able to see them better.

It just seems to me that the more squiggles and beads arrive at this point, the better. So all of a sudden this little $5 sweatshirt project is going to take up a lot more of my time than I thought it would. But I can't hold back now....

Altered Sweatshirt

In the new issue of CQMagOnline, which should be going live at the end of the week, my friend Binki Thalman has an article about how to prepare a standard crew neck sweatshirt for embellishing...as a cardigan!
I am in between projects so thought this would be a good time to give this a try...and also to play with my machine embellisher.

So here we have a size L Hanes womens' sweatshirt, which cost $5 at WalMart. A few of my potential feltable goodies are along side it.

A few hours later and I am at this point. The whispy wool and silk roving is felted into place, and will serve as the background for today's further experimenting....a perfect pastime for a rainy morning...