My 3 Monsters: The French Knot Cardigan Refashion

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1.12.2012

The French Knot Cardigan Refashion

I'm going on a Girl's Cruise to Mexico next weekend with a few of my besties and I am so excited.  I know it seems like odd timing what with my husbands lack of employment, but it was a surprise gift from my friends and, I'm not gonna' lie, I could use a break from real life right now.  I have been mentally preparing my wardrobe and lamenting the fact that I can't go out and buy a bunch of cute new outfits to take.  It's fine, really.  I don't need any new clothes.  But then I had a stroke of inspiration the other day.

Y'all know I love a good thrift-store sweater makeover, right?  I troll the local Goodwills on Thursdays {dollar days -- holla!} looking for boring old sweaters and I have amassed quite a stash.  I had actually started working on this one during our trip to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, but had grown weary of it and put it to the back of the craft closet -- I'll show you why.  I found this sweater refashion from Two Butterflies on Pinterest a while back and fell hopelessly in love with it.


I adore the scattering of French knots around the neckline.  Uh-dore!  So I set out to loosely recreate this sweater on one from my stash:  


It's easy enough, sure.  French knots are not that hard to do. {Here is a really great tutorial on The Purl Bee.} There are just sooooo many of them.  My fingers got sore and I ran out of embroidery floss about halfway through one side, at which point I jumped ship and abandoned the project.  But my desperation for new cruise clothing inspired me to pull it back out and finish that bad boy.  I'm so glad that I did because I absolutely love it. 

Like I said, this is really an easy project.  I started by ironing lightweight fusible interfacing onto the inside of my sweater in the general area where I wanted my design.  I thought maybe that would keep my sweater from stretching as I sewed and keep the knots from slipping through the weave of my sweater.  It was really helpful.  Next I laid my sweater out flat and used a piece of white chalk to sketch out my rough design on the front.  I just drew a line straight across to mark the lowest point I wanted the knots and a curved line on each side about an inch and a half from the finished neck edge as a guide for my transition from the really-close-together knots and the just-kind-of-close together knots.  After that all you have to do is make half a billion french knots while you watch three or four movies and voila!  You're done.


The hardest part was getting the two sides to match.  I had to lay it out flat every once in a while as I working and look at it from a distance to be sure.  Even so, I ended up with a lot more knots on the second side.  I had to go back to the first side and fill in some empty spots, but then that side looked too crowded so I had to go back to the other side and add a few more.  I finally just had to walk away from it and I think it looks fine. And now I'm excited about having a new sweater to take on my vacation that didn't cost me anything.  {OK, $1, but I paid that so long ago it's like it was free.}

I'm going to try to get another sweater done before we go, which I will share here, of course.  Have a good one, folks!




4 comments:

  1. Super Cute!!!! 1week and counting... GIRLS CRUISE!!! :)

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  2. I love it! I am awful at French knots though. Haha. And your cruise sounds like it's going to be so much fun! I'm jealous of you ladies!!

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  3. Eep! The cute! I'm a thrift store junky also and now your newest follower!

    Erica

    threeoclockwinds.blogspot.com

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  4. Getting up and walking away for a bit ... I KNOW that practice! I love your sweater more than the sweater that hit you with inspiration! Thank you for sharing!

    Shai

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