I took this old green sweater a friend gave me and decided to make it into cozy leg warmers.
Step 1: Use a seam ripper (or scissors) to remove each arm from the sweater. Be careful the ends will quickly begin to unravel. Now take the remaining sweater vest and put it away, this could end up being a matching hat.
Step 2: Determine how tight you want the top of the leg warmer, by stretching a piece of elastic around your calf. Be sure to leave an extra inch for sewing it together. Sew a piece of material (mine is left over from hemming curtains)to go around the elastic strip leaving plenty of extra fabric for when it's stretched. Now connect the elastic inside the fabric together followed by the fabric with a hand stitch.
Step 3: Turn the sweater sleeves inside out and hand stitch the piece of covered elastic to the smaller wrist section of the soon to be leg warmer. I made the top stitch pretty thorough then just did large stitches with Xs, it reminds me of a Free People type embellishment.
Step 4: While sleeve is still inside out fold over opposite end and sew around with machine using same thread color as sweater. It doesn't have to be perfect because it'll be scrunchy bunchy at your foot
Step 5: Put on your new leg warmers over skinny jeans, with a skirt, or however you want. You could thread a ribbon through the top or sew large buttons down the sides. Get creative and have fun.
Now you can practice Plies and Pirouettes anywhere!
Super, great idea. Did you make matching handwarmers of the remaining sweater?
ReplyDeleteVery cute idea. Just wondering about the top of the sweater sleeves (worn at the bottom for the leg warmers) - doesn't anything need to be done to them? Just overcast so that it doesn't fray? ....Submitted by a generally non-crafty person who occasionally tries something. . . Thank you!
ReplyDeleteLove these! I'm sharing this post on my blog this week as part of a Winter Projects for Tweens round-up. My daughter can make these herself and wear them to ballet.
ReplyDelete