Oh Sew That Mercedes

Do you need a quick and useful gift for the holidays?  Do you have a couple of jumpers that are finally beyond repair, though if you follow @mendingmahem ‘s feed on instagram you may feel nothing is beyond repair, so are ready to be repurposed? Then may I interest you in a quick gift of a cosy wrap scarf.

To make this scarf you will need two jumpers from which you need to remove the sleeves, cut at right angles to the top of the sleeve to the underarm seam.

Either unpick the seam or as I did, slice the under arm seam to open the sleeve out

Join two sleeves together along the top, I just overlocked all my seams but a zig-zag stitch will work just as well. Press the seam to one side. Repeat with the other pair of sleeves.

I went very conservative and just joined the same colours to each other but you can mix it up a bit and have some fun.

Now sew the two pieces together along the long edges.  Depending on your sleeves the shaping may be quite angular in the middle, I smoothed this out when sewing the two pieces together.  Also, make sure your centre seams are pointing in opposite directions to minimise the bulk.

Turn the scarf right side out through the cuff ends and press.

Wrap the scarf around your neck and decide where you want the cross over to be and mark that point on the scarf.  

I decided that I wanted four slots in the scarf to weave the end through to keep it cosy around my neck.  Looking at the crossing point already marked I set out the position of the four slots, parallel to the side edge, evenly across the scarf.

To create the slots I used the manual button hole option on my NX7.  This option allows you to make a button hole whatever size you want wherever you want it and is also an absolute dream to use. When you start sewing the side bar is created. When you reach the desired length you stop sewing, press the reverse button and when you start sewing again the top bar is created and the machine starts its reverse journey sewing the opposite side bar.  When you get back to the bottom, stop sewing press the reverse button, start sewing again and the bottom bar is created. 

And that is it, a new scarf from two old jumpers.