One Pin At A Time

Well to make good on my promise of working through my projects and recipes from my Pinterest Boards I picked a crafty project from my board Crafty Ideas for this months One Pin At a Time. Turning an old wool sweater into a Hobo Bag, or in my case a shrunken sweater, not an old one. 🙂

Original Pin

Pretty self-explanatory, right?

I actually didn’t have any directions to read just the images to follow seeing as how the site was in a different language but honestly I usually only need the pictures and then I just kind of set forth on my path. I captured a few pictures so I tried to condense them for your viewing pleasure. Can’t have you getting bored now, can we?

Up-Cycled Wool Sweater Turned Hobo Bag

I started out with a perfectly good men’s argyle wool sweater…only it was several times too small. First, I cut off the sleeves, folding the sweater in half to even up the two curves. Next, I measured out the length down the neck I wanted to cut. Once I cut out the neck, I rounded out the lines.

After I had my shape I turned the sweater inside out and sewed the bottom together. Then I squared the bottom. The original pin has you sewing on a bottom but my sweater was already so long I decided to make my life easy and drop that step 🙂

After I had the straps cut and the bottom squared I could have pretty much stopped, which is wear the pictorial ends in the pin, however, I decided I would like to make my bag a little more functional. To do this I made an insert for the bottom to help hold its shape, I added a zippered pocket, and I reinforced the straps.

I used a very heavy weight interfacing and some key snuggle flannel to make the bottom insert. I just measured the squared bottom, added a half-inch all around, cut my snuggle flannel, sewed a pillowcase, and then inserted the interfacing. You may put a few tacks in after positioning the bottom insert to keep it from shifting.

To reinforce the straps I just cut two strips of my snuggle flannel print per my measurements of the straps and pressed under the edges and proceeded to hand sew them to the underside of the sweater straps. I decided to hand sew them on because the wool sweater has such a high pile I thought the machine stitching on the outside might look too tight and out-of-place.

I made a floating zippered pocket and hand stitched this to the back of the inside of the purse. I only stitched the top and put tacks into the two bottom corners to make the stitches on the outside of the purse seem invisible. I will post a tutorial soon on creating a floating pocket 🙂

Last but certainly not least I adorned the purse with bows and buttons and one key charm ♥ To make the bows I just cut strips from a left over sleeve and made foax bows with the strips. My last step was to sew my shop’s label on the bottom right side of the back…Free advertising, yes please!

Overall….I now have a School Girl Chic-esc….Hobo Bag 🙂 Not a bad way to re-purpose an un-used sweater, huh?

Final Creation