Nov 19, 2012

Not just another sweater stocking Repurposing a treasured heirloom

Rita Family Matters, How-to DIY, Repurpose, Reuse, Recycle Christmas, green living, holidays, repurposing, Thanksgiving 18 Comments

I am a staunch believer in No Christmas Before Thanksgiving. In fact, I’m a bit of a crankypants on the subject. (Just ask our kids.)

I believe in giving all of Thanksgiving weekend to Thanksgiving–no Black Friday shopping, no wreath hanging, no Christmas nothing around here until the last piece of pumpkin pie is gone.

I wanted to be a purist about it all here on the blog, too, but I’m going to break my own rule a bit today. Because–while, yes, this is a tutorial on making a Christmas stocking from a sweater–this is really a post about gratitude and appreciation, which is what Thanksgiving is all about.

Now, if you’re looking for a quick and easy tutorial on how to whip up a Christmas stocking out of an old sweater, that’s not what this one is. (If that’s what you’re after, I encourage you to go here.)

This is a tutorial on how to make a Christmas stocking out of a cherished sweater, with the kind of careful attention that went into the making of the original piece.  It is also a tribute to my grandma, who kept me warm for years with her works of fiber art.

 A little background

My grandma will be turning 96 in February, and it’s been more than a few years now since she’s put her needles down.  (And yes, this is the same Grandma with the fabulous house I shared this summer.)

Sadly, most of her sweaters are gone now.  But in addition to the one above, I have two others I’ve held onto through two marriages and six moves:

Last year after Cane and I combined our households, drowning in tons of stuff we realized we didn’t need, I wondered what to do with these sweaters I haven’t worn in years and probably won’t wear again. (They just don’t fit me now.)

I was reading a lot about decluttering and simplifying.  Most minimalist writers recommend letting go of pieces that have only sentimental value, even family heirlooms.  They often suggest taking pictures to remember the items and passing them on to someone who might use them.

Much as I’d come to appreciate a life with less, I just couldn’t let these sweaters go.  I put them back in their box and resolved to think about it later.

One night last December, looking at our stockings hanging from our mantel, I had a brilliant idea, one I was sure no one had ever had before:  I could make the sweaters into Christmas stockings!  I could preserve my grandmother’s beautiful needlework and make something that will actually get used (as opposed to taking up real estate in my garage).

As it turned out, lots of people had already had this brilliant idea–leading me to understand that I am not destined to be one of the people who comes up with original brilliant ideas, at least in the area of craftiness.  (I’m OK with that, though.) One thing I’m thankful for this year is that so many of those people share what they’ve done, so that I can learn from them how to turn those ideas into reality.

So, how did I do it?

In a word:  slowly.

I will spare you all the thinking and pausing and thinking again that went into my process.  I was so worried that I’d ruin the sweaters and my chance of making stockings from them that I did a lot of thinking before I made the first cut.

My grandma’s craftsmanship is impeccable.  Her yarns are beautiful.  The idea of cutting into her sweater seemed a bit like slicing into a Van Gogh to make a collage.  I needed the thinking time to make sure I wanted to do this.  I needed the planning time to have a chance to fully examine and appreciate Grandma’s work.  I needed time to reflect on what her sweaters meant to me, and what it would mean to transform them–to make sure that was really the right thing to do.

When I was sure, I knew I was ready for step 1.  Or maybe 1.5.  Maybe the pausing and thinking was the true step 1.

Step 1.5:  Make a pattern.

I used my existing stocking to make a pattern, which is just a cheap red felt stocking.  This stocking has a story, too.  It’s part of a tradition from my years of marriage to my children’s dad, made the year I was pregnant with Will and Grace.

Grace had always loved my old glittery stocking, which is why it’s the one I used for the three years after her dad and I divorced.  She’s long been a fan of sparkly things, and I think she likes the story behind it:  I went a bit crazy with my stocking that year because I was in my first month of bedrest (but only the 4th month of the pregnancy).  What else was I going to do with my time?

Because of its history, I liked the idea of using it as the basis for a new stocking, but I also liked the idea of making a new stocking for the next stage of our life that we entered last year.

To make the pattern I simply traced around the stocking on tissue paper, then added a half-inch for a seam allowance.  (At this point, I thought I would be sewing the stocking on my sewing machine.  I ended up not doing that, but I’d still recommend a seam allowance.)

Step 2:  Place pattern on sweater (to see how it will all fit).

My sweaters are large enough that I’ll be able to make two stockings from each one.  The bottom edge of the sweater needs to be reserved for the cuff at the top of the stocking, which means that the body of the stocking needs to come from the upper body of the sweater.

Before doing anything with my grandma’s sweaters, I practiced with an old sweater Cane had put in the Goodwill pile.  I pinned on the pattern and cut it out, and then I just free-handed the cuff piece.  Doing this made me feel confident about the plan for Grandma’s sweaters.

If the sweater has any kind of pattern to it, you’ll want to consider how you want that pattern placed on the stocking.  For the green sweater, I decided that I wanted the smooth part of the pattern at the top of the stocking, so that it would nicely set off the ribbing that would be on the cuff.

In my plan, I decided to make the cuff a sewn-on piece because I wanted it to fold over.  If you want to go a simpler route without a fold-over cuff, you can place the pattern such that the ribbing is the top of the stocking.

Step 3:  Detach sleeves and undo side seams.

As I worked with the sweater in step 2, I realized there was no way I could sew the stocking on a machine.  The sweater is too bulky.  I didn’t want to take a chance on wrecking my “fabric” somehow.  I decided that I would need to hand-sew it, using yarn to attach the pieces.

I first considered using new yarn.  I decided, though, that I wanted the stockings to be as wholly Grandma’s work as they could be. 

That meant using yarn from the sleeves to sew the stockings, which meant I’d need to unravel them.  I wasn’t sure how to unravel a sweater, so I went looking for information and found this great tutorial from Neauveau Fiber Art.

Grandma’s work was so nicely done that it took me forever to find the yarn/thread to snip in detaching the seams.  (She used yarn in some places and thread in others.)

Eventually it came free, though, and I was able to unravel the sleeves to get the yarn I needed.

I decided to undo the long seams at the side of the sweater so that I could lay it flat to cut out one piece of the stocking body at a time.

Step 4:  Cut out the stocking body pieces.

After laying the sweater out into one flat piece, I pinned the pattern to it.  I placed the long side of the stocking at the sweater’s edge.  I knew I’d be dealing with raw edges for much of the stocking, but I wanted to take advantage of that long finished edge.  Seemed like it would be more stable and easier to work with.  (It was.)

Then I carefully cut around the pattern. After I removed it, it looked like this:

I placed the pattern right in the hole left by the first piece because I want the sweater pattern to match at the seams.

If the sweater is thin enough, you might be able to cut both pieces at the same time (as I did with my practice sweater), but I didn’t try that with Grandma’s sweater.

Step 5:  Sew the two body pieces together, placing the right sides together.

For the sewing, I used a simple whip stitch.  A little quick research indicated it would be the strongest stitch.  You can learn how to do it here.

My stitching wasn’t the most beautiful or even.  I had to make a lot of stitches, particularly in the parts of the stocking that didn’t have finished edges.  This is what it looked like when I was done:

 

Step 6:  Cut out the piece for the cuff.

As mentioned earlier, you’ll want to use the bottom edge of the sweater for your stocking cuff, so that you can make use of that nicely finished edge.  To know how large to make it, I first measured the top of my stocking:

I was a little concerned about how the cuff would work because the ribbing at the bottom of the sweater made the bottom of the cuff tighter (and shorter across) than the top of the cuff.  As you can see above, the top of my stocking was 8 1/2 inches.  I decided to make the cuff piece 18 inches long, to allow for a seam and to make sure that the cuff wouldn’t be too tight.

Once I had the right length for the piece, I needed to make sure it was a consistent height.  I decided to make the cuff 4 inches high (from the bottom of the ribbing.  The length is determined by how large a cuff you want.  I just measured four inches at regular intervals, and marked the length with a pin.  Then I cut across the top of the pins.

Once the piece was cut out, I folded it so that the right sides were together, and I stitched the open edges together.

Step 7:  Pin the cuff in place.

Before sewing the seam to join the two ends of the cuff, I pinned it in place to make sure that it would fit.

Just so you know, I once scored in the 2nd percentile on a test of mechanical reasoning.  That means 98% of the people who took the test scored higher than I did.  Figuring out exactly how to put the cuff together with the stocking, so that when I turned the stocking right side out the cuff would fold over the top of it, also with the right side up, took far more effort than it should have.

I’m not going to be able to explain why you need to do it this way–and maybe there are other ways this can go–but this is what I did:

And then I realized I would need a loop, so I could hang the stocking.

I thought about just sewing one onto the stocking after it was finished, but I wanted the stocking to be as well-made as I could make it.  That meant figuring out how to sew the loop into the cuff seam.

But even before that, it meant making a piece to use for a loop.

Step 8:  Knit a small piece for the hanging loop.

Because my grandma taught me the rudiments of knitting when I was 8, knitting a piece for the loop wasn’t a big deal.  I was surprised to find that my fingers had some sort of muscle memory for how to cast on stitches.  (I used yarn from unraveling the sleeve, and I have needles because my grandma gave me hers a few years ago.)  If you want to learn the basics of knitting, I like the illustrations and instructions you can find here.

I only needed to cast on 6 stitches.  Not sure how many rows I knit, but I just eyeballed it and cast off when it looked twice as long as I wanted the loop to be (because you fold it in half to make the loop).

Then I needed to figure out how to pin it into the stocking/cuff business.

Again, I’m going to spare you my painful thinking process.  This is what you need to do:

First, figure out which way you want to the toe to point when the stocking is hanging.  (It could go either way with mine because the stocking is the same on both sides.)  You’ll need to insert the loop at the seam that’s opposite of the seam that runs down to the toe.

You place the loop in between the stocking and the cuff.  The raw edges go up and the loop goes down, in between the cuff and stocking.  All the raw edges are facing up, and they’ll all get sewn together.   

Step 9:  Sew the cuff to the stocking

This part was tricky for me.  I used a whip stitch again, but I had a hard time getting to all the loose ends sewed up.  You’ll want to make sure that you put yarn through any open loops you see.  Like this:

Step 10:  Find the holes

At this point, I turned the stocking right side out, and I was hoping there was nothing left to do but revel in the glory of my awesome project, but I discovered holes in my seams–places where the cut yard hadn’t been bound up by my seam sewing.  So I went around all the seams, poking a bit with my fingers.  If my fingers poked through, I reinforced the area with more whip stitching.

Step 11:  Revel in the glory of your awesome project.

If decoration was all I was after–cool-looking stockings that I could make easily and quickly–I’d definitely use Remodelaholic’s method (linked to at the beginning of this post).  There’s much to like about how she did it:  It is easy, it’s attractive, it’s inexpensive, and it repurposes sweaters that might otherwise end up in a landfill.

But that’s not what I was after here.  This stocking is much more to me than decoration.

For my entire childhood, until I was in my mid-20s, I spent every Christmas Eve with my Grandma and Grandpa Ott.  It’s probably been more than 20 years since I’ve been able to do that, and while I’ve had some lovely Christmas Eves since then, none of them have really felt like Christmas Eve.  I suspect that no Christmas Eve will–at least, not in the way those early ones did.

There was something really wonderful about that constancy.  It’s been a source of sadness to me that I haven’t been able to create that kind of steady holiday tradition for my own children.  Because of marriages, divorces, and geography, their family life has been more complicated than the one I grew up  with; as a result, what my kids have done for Christmas has varied from year to year.  I know they will not attach Christmas so firmly to a particular place and to particular people as I have.

The past few years have shown me in many ways the only constant in life is change.  A 20+ year Christmas tradition was a rare and wonderful gift, one I treasure all the more for seeing how special it was.  I don’t expect to have that again, but now, thanks to my heirloom transformation, I suspect that for the rest of my life, I will have a little piece of constancy in my Christmas–and a tangible symbol of the things that made those early Christmases so wonderful for me.

My mantel might change, and the people gathered near it might change, but I think that from here on out, I will hang from it the same stockings, made from the sweaters my Grandma made for me.  I’m sure that at times they will make me a little sad for what once was and is no more–but what I will feel more often is gratitude for all that I was given and still have.  

I think my grandma will approve.

Wishing everyone a peaceful holiday season-

Linking to DIY Showoff.