AI powered

This Week’s Stories

Turn Your Old Sweaters Into a No-Sew Circle Scarf!

Anjelika Temple

As Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Brit + Co, Anjelika Temple brings her voracious consumption of all things creative and colorful to DIY projects, geeky gadgetry finds and more. When she's not DIY-ing her heart out, you'll find her throwing dinner parties with friends or adventuring with her husband David, their daughters Anokhi and Indira, and their silly dog Turkey.

Full Bio

Nov 09, 2013

Turn Your Old Sweaters Into a No-Sew Circle Scarf!

As we delve into the cold fall and winter months, we’re pulling out those under-the-bed storage boxes and busting out our sweaters. The problem is, some of them look really, really tired. Cardigans with holes at the collar, long sweaters that are pilly and weird, and a sweater with ruffles. What?! For real. And since none of these are in good enough shape to post on Threadflip or even donate, it’s time to repurpose. Follow the tutorial below to see how to turn three old unusable sweaters into a totally chic circle scarf.

Materials:

– old sweaters!

– card stock

Tools:
– hot glue gun

– fabric scissors

– painter’s tape

Aside from the sweaters, the supplies here are pretty run of the mill. If you don’t have a glue gun, fabric scissors, and painter’s tape, it’s time to get on it! We used three sweaters but you could easily do this with less or more. The stripes you create are essential for not letting it get too shabby chic.

To make sure your scarf doesn’t come out looking like a Project Runway assignment gone totally wrong, create a simple template to follow. We took an 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of card stock and simply cut it in half. Place loops of painter’s tape on one side – you’ll be sticking this to the sweater.

Stick the template on your sweater and use fabric scissors to cut around it. Then peel it off! Do this with every part of your sweater that’s flat. We found that if you try to incorporate buttons or other details, it can look a little messy.

Repeat this with the rest of your sweaters.

Now you have a pile of sweater rectangles!

Lay them out how you like. Then hot glue along the top edge of your first one and attach the bottom edge of the next one to that. Press firmly to make sure the seam is tight. Then continue with the rest of your rectangles.

Now you’ve got a scarf that looks like this! Now we need to turn it into a circle or infinity scarf.

Before we do that, trim any weird edges that don’t line up.

Onto the circle! Line up the two ends and then lay them flat on the table. Glue them as you did the pieces before, just be careful that you don’t end up with a twist on your circle.