49-Cent Friday Refashion: Sweaters To Ski Caps!

Howdy Folks!

I’ve been super busy this week, working on the refashion I’m about to show you, which is going to end up a part of a great “Christmastime-Means-Giving” activity for our family (more at the bottom).

 

Most of these sweaters were purchased for 49-cents or less (of course!).

I started with a small stash of teal and blue felted, wool sweaters.

I have a pattern for an adult ski-cap I used to make Christmas presents for friends and family members several years ago, and for this refashion I cut down the pattern to make a kids version!

Using my nifty pattern, I cut out 4 triangular pieces for the hat (plus a few more to make more hats), and a whole bunch of bands (although I only need one band per hat).

After cutting out all of the outer pieces, I needed to get the pieces cut out for the lining of my hat.

Now to make this a true refashion, the lining would be great if refashioned from a fleece sweatshirt or sweatpants or blanket (you get the drift).

The problem is, I don’t have anything fleece to refashion with. Lucky for me, I still had a TON of fleece fabric that I purchased in bulk from JoAnn Fabrics several years ago, when I first started making these hats.

Using the same pattern, I cut out a whole bunch of triangles and bands from the fleece and then sewed four of the triangles together. Then sewed the bands together.

I then repeated these steps for all of the sweater pieces I had previously cut out, with the exception of leaving a small 1 1/2″ opening in the top of the hat for the fringe to be inserted into.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that all of the bands for the hats were cut from the bottom, waist-band of the sweaters.

Now to make the fringy top of the hats, I used the cuffs from the sweaters.

After cutting off several sweater cuffs, I trimmed them down to about 3″ x 3″ (or 3″ x 3 1/2″) squares, and cut 2″ slits about 1/2″ apart, to make the “fringe”.

Once I had a whole bunch of fringy cuffs, I matched up three for each hat, layered them up, and folded them over a couple of times. I then sewed the bottom of the fringe together and inserted it into the top of the hat. I then stitched them in place.

Then I inserted the fleece lining (matching wrong sides together and matching up the seams).

Matching wrong-sides together again, I placed the fleece lining inside the band and starting with the finished (bottom) edge of the band, I hand-stitched the sweater band to the fleece band, using a contrasting-colored yarn.

After stitching all the way around the bottom of the cuff, I tucked the fleece into the cap and wrapped the sweater band around the base of the hat.

Once the hat was neatly tucked into the cuff, I stitched around the top of the cuff just like I did on the bottom.

Once the cuff was stitched on, I tied off the yarn and tucked in the ends and voilá.

Teal is my daughter’s favorite color, and I’d say she looks awfully cute in this hat.

Cutie patootie!

Now to make these hats even cuter, I made some flower pins by cutting sweater scraps into different-sized petal-shapes, layered them, stitched them together and added a pin back…

Flower pins!

 

Hat with flower pin.

I just love these hats. Each one is unique and they are all super warm. And so fun to make!

On a side note; for Advent this year, instead of getting an Advent calendar filled with chocolates for the kids to open each day, I decided to do something a little different.

I saw a cool pin on Pinterest about doing a good deed each day for Advent.

I thought that would be a great way to keep our family focused on giving rather than receiving this Christmas, so I decided to fill 25 envelopes for each of my kids, with good deeds for them to do each day of Advent.

Even though they each have the same 25 good deeds to do over the course of Advent, I tried to shuffle them up so that they weren’t all doing the same task each day.

However, there were a few good deeds that I thought would be really cool to do as a family, so I made sure to give them identical deeds to do on the weekends.

Tomorrow’s good deed is to find some toys, and clothes that we can donate to a local shelter.

I thought it would be cool to donate these hats as well.

Do you celebrate Advent? What are some cool traditions you do to celebrate the holiday?

~Jen