The White Scarf

Project: The White Scarf

Goals: to make a scarf from an old sweater, to have a white scarf

My plan for my outfit for today (for going to watch Wales v Ireland at an Irish pub and then to go Judey's leaving do) is to wear the dress I finished yesterday and my new spring coat. I realized, though, that I don't have a scarf that would go with this little ensemble. What's a girl to do? Well, I could make a scarf. So that's what I did.

Most of my scarves are pink or purple or blue, but all of them clash with the pattern of the dress. My spring coat goes fairly well with it, though. I decided to make a white scarf to match the outfit (plus I can just wear it with the coat and any other outfit, really).

I have this sweater from Zara that is a little too tight (turns into a sweater-bra, basically) and I never wear it. So I figured, why not refashion it into a scarf? Earlier this week, when I started the whole refashioning-thing I was hesitant because I'm kind of a pack rat and I don't like getting rid of things. But now I'm totally okay with it if I can wear it now as something else. At least it's getting use.

I cut the sweater up into pieces for the scarf.

The initial idea was to use the two strips from the body as the middle of the scarf, and use the sleeves as the ends. So I turned the sleeves inside-out and stitched the cuffs closed. The sleeve on the top is right-side-out, and the sleeve on the bottom inside-out.

Then I attached the body parts with the sleeves by using the same techniques as making bias tape: I put the pieces at right angles to each other...

And stitched a diagonal seam.

Then I cut the seam allowance off and unfolded the pieces. Voila!

Here are three of the pieces connected with two diagonal seams.

I attached the sleeves and figured I had finished my scarf. But, if you look at this picture, you can see that the scarf ended up looking like either a child's pair of tights or a scarf with gym socks sewn to the ends. Oh dear.

So I cut some more fabric from the sweater to elongate the scarf and get rid of the gym socks. For the ends this time I decided to use the hemming detail where the sleeve met the body of the sweater, turned inside-out.

I sewed them all together and here's the final product, on my kitchen chair.

I'm very happy with it; since I used both the front and the back of the sweater to make the scarf two-ply it keeps its shape very nicely (without looking like a neck brace). It's a bit uneven on the sides (because the sweater was a little stretchy) but I'm not bothered. It looks decent on. So, here it is on my rack of scarves:

...and here it is with the dress from yesterday and the spring coat.