What can you get for $1?

Hubby and I do most of our shopping for kids' clothes at thrift stores. There are a couple of awesome ones near our house, and it makes no sense to pay $10 or more for a piece of clothing that will be worn for just a few months. So, I did some shopping for the kids a few weeks ago, and stopped by the men's sweater rack while I was there to see if there were any good items for upcycling into diaper covers. I know, I know, I should really limit myself to sewing out of my massive box of sweaters that I got for $10, but... well, what can I say. I'm not that disciplined. And anyway, the sweater rack is pretty hit or miss, so it's by no means a certainty that I'll find anything good when I look.

Well, turns out that it was a "hit" day. I picked up three nice wool sweaters for a grand total of $3.50.

Here is the first one. It was priced at $4, but since it was sale day at the thrift store, it was only $1. (Yeah, that's right, I'm so cheap that I don't even shop thrift stores: I shop sale days at thrift stores.)

It's from American Eagle Outfitters. 100% lambswool, which is one of my very favorite types of wool for upcycling, because it is usually soft but still nice and thick. Men's size extra large, which meant that even after I felted it slightly (by washing on warm and then drying on high) to make it a little thicker, it was still plenty big.

So, I got to cutting and sewing. And after a few hours, I had this:

Top left - Soaker, Katrina pattern size medium, made out of the body of the sweater.

Bottom left - Shorties, Katrina pattern size small, made out of the bottom of the sweater's body.

Right - Longies, Katrina pattern size medium, made out of the sweater sleeves.

Now for some action shots! The soaker is a little big on Noob, but not too bad:

By the way, I cheated on this one :) I didn't have enough fabric in the sweater for an extra wetzone layer, so I cut one out of a coat (from my $10 box of sweaters... so I did use it!). It's super thick, so this soaker should be pretty bulletproof. Here's a shot of the inside with the extra layer:

Here are the shorties. They are a little long, because I cut them the same length as the other pair of shorties I made, forgetting that I wouldn't be hemming these ones :) (I used the finished edge of the bottom of the sweater instead.)

And the longies. Obviously, Noob won't have any use for these until next winter, so I made them pretty big:

Not bad for a buck.

The beginning

I got my start as a sewer a little over a year ago.

I was using cloth diapers on my daughter, Littles (age 2 at the time), and had really started to love wool longies. Longies are pants that double as cloth diaper covers. They're trimmer than most cloth diaper options, they're more absorbent, and they're easy to get on a toddler who doesn't like to sit still for diaper changes! There's only one problem: They can be expensive! One of my main reasons for using cloth diapers is to save money, so spending $20 or more on a pair of longies just wasn't going to happen.

But then I heard about people sewing longies out of old wool sweaters, purchased for just a few dollars at a thrift store. I even found a free longies pattern online. Now we're talking. There was only one problem: I didn't know how to sew. And I'm not a crafty person. At. All. It seemed easy enough, but was I getting in over my head?

Undaunted, I asked around to see if any of my friends had a sewing machine, in hopes that I could give sewing a try without investing any money. Sure enough, one of my friends was happy to let me borrow hers. One night, I put my daughter to bed and then sat down with the borrowed sewing machine (and its manual), a free pattern for wool soakers (diaper covers), and an old wool sweater of mine that had a hole in it. A few hours later, I had this:

Not the prettiest thing, but it worked beautifully as a cover for Littles' overnight diapers until she outgrew it about six months later!

Encouraged, I hit up my favorite local thrift store on their half price day, walked away with an armload of sweaters for less than $10... and a few nights later, I had a couple of pairs of longies for Littles.

Who then promptly potty trained. Oh well.

But I did have another baby on the way, so I sewed up some longies for him. And when I got a good deal on Dora the Explorer fleece, I made some pajamas for Dora-obsessed Littles as a Christmas present:

The friend who originally lent me the sewing machine decided to get a new one, so she was happy to sell her old one to me for cheap. I was on my way.

After Noob's arrival in late January, I was too busy to sew for quite a while. But I've slowly gotten back into it, and I've found more and more fun projects to work on. I love it!

I decided to start a blog to share what I'm doing, and hopefully encourage other rookie sewers to jump on in. The water is fine!