Romantic Lace Sweater

A crafty friend of mine (she creates beautiful vintage button bracelets), sent me a pin a couple of days ago of this sweater writing, "This piece made me think of you. You could SO do this :-). I like!" Well, I also liked and had seen other sweaters with this same style that I'd been wanting to replicate.

Now, part of the joy in thrifting (for me), is finding vintage lace, trims, doilies, etc, in good condition to incorporate them into some of my pieces. So, I've got a small stash of such notions just waiting for this kind of project!

Here's what I started off with: a gray (thrifted) sweater that I'd ruined by getting grease on it then washing it so as to fix said grease stain in place...yeah, and a couple of bits from my lacey stash!

Now, I don't have a step-by-step on how I went about this, because frankly there was so much trial and error involved, it would take too long to go through all of the errors ;). I can pretty simply explain the basic concept, though. First, I cut up each side seam of the sweater, opening up a triangular area in which to insert the lace I would be using. The doily was cut in half and sewn into each opening. The sleeves were cut shorter and at an angle, and these pieces were attached into the doily section to allow for some stretch on the sides (creating a better silhouette...don't worry, you'll see it in the pics). Then, the pleated lace-trimmed pieces were layered underneath the doily sides, and a longer piece of the same pleated ruffly trim was sewn under the back hem of the sweater. In order to get rid of the grease-stained section in the front, I simply cut out a thin crescent shape and finished off all edges with a zigzag creating a bit of ruffling by using my basic presser foot (there are special ones for avoiding this phenomenon of rufflage if you so choose).

Here's how it all came out:

I love it! It was seriously a pain in my rear to get just right (not sure why, but it was!), but I learned quite a bit about this process and hope to do something closer to the inspiration sweater with a forest green sweater I have in my refashion pile. Thanks, B, for sending it my way and getting my creative juices flowing on this one!

Here's one last look at the before and after:

Peace,
Andrea