Yarn, sweaters.........

[butterfly_girl]

I just got to thinking about yarn and how people can take apart sweaters, and use the yarn! Do you have any idea of how many sweaters I've gotten rid of! :eekMakes me want to cry.........I just gave them away, so they did go to a good cause. But now, I'm just thinking that there was a beautiful burgundy chenille sweater I got rid of because it was too bulky! That would have been great to take apart, and use again........

 

Anyways, I just had to get this off my chest.......

[Chicki]

I feel the same way...got rid of a cashmere sweater not too long ago to goodwill.

 

That would have been WONDERFUL to crochet with...

 

And I have been crocheting for like 10 years now and havent thought about doing that until recently...duh chicki!!

 

 

 

~Chicki

[seagull1993]

Okay -- I gotta ask this. I have been crocheting for years and never knew one could recycle yarn from a sweater. How do you unravel it? All the old sweaters I have that I guess would be good yarn to crochet with are currently in some form of knitted stitch. Some guidance on this please? :-)

[unicorn37757]

Gee, I've been crocheting for over 25 years & never thought of recycling my old sweaters & such!

[Aggie May]

Make sure that the sweater is knitted to shape, not cut and sew. Cut and sew is easy to recognise as it is cut out as in sewing fabric and overlocked together. If you try to unravel that, you end up with lots of short bits.

If it has neat seams inside and you can see the edge of the knitting, you can unravel.

To un-pick the garment, imagine where they might have finished it off and this is where you start. Probably the neck band. You may have to snip a few places to get going but it is worth wasting a small amount to get started. Some are put together with a linker which is easy to undo.

When you have all the bits separated, you can find the ends and start unravelling. Wind the yarn quite firmly to start taking the wrinkles out. (Wish it worked with faces)

When it is all done, you can make the yarn into skeins and tie in several places, then dip into warm water, wring it out in a large towel and hang on the clothes line to dry, out of the sun.

There are a few web-sites which give you a step by step instruction.

Have fun.

Colleen.

PS If you are knitting or Crocheting garments, always finish them off in the same way each time, then if you do want to unpick them you know where to start. I just unravlled something I made 10yrs ago and I had no trouble finding my ends.

[MarvieN]

The first sweaters I ever unraveled were chenille, they were just too warm to wear... and chenille yarn is expensive lol... so I took them apart. After that, I started haunting the thrift shops for sweaters *g*

 

Here's how I go about it:

 

First find a sweater. Check the side seams, if they have been serged, pass on it. You'll end up with strands of fringe (or you could do a magic ball kind of thing I guess) What you want are seams that have been sewn together. Almost all sweaters will have shoulder seams that have been serged, but there's only a couple of inches worth of short bits. This is ok. You still get quite a lot of yarn.

 

Supplies needed:

Seam ripper (small scissors work too)

Scissors to cut the serged shoulders.

 

I start on one of the side seams, snip the thread or yarn used to sew the seams together and work your way up. Sometimes I find just the right thread and can just pull that and the whole side comes apart. I love that

 

Then do the same for the sleeve. Detach it from the body in the same way and then snip the seam thread or yarn to open it up.

 

Do the other side now. Then go ahead and cut the serged shoulder seams (I've tried picking them, takes forever and you still end up with short bits so just go ahead and cut them)

 

You should now have a front, a back and two sleeves.

 

To find the end to start raveling, usually on the body pieces I start at the shoulder, get all the bits gone, then eventually you'll find that it's no longer bits, but you've found the main yarn, start winding now Occasionally you'll start at the bottom, but mostly I find you can start at the top. If you have to start from the bottom, the end of the yarn is usually woven in pretty well, it takes some patience and picking, but you can usually find it within a few inches of the side seam area.

 

The sleeves work pretty much the same way. I generally find the end up near the shoulder.

 

Keep in mind, there are two ends, but only one of them will unravel (think of your starting chain, you can rip from one end, but the not the other) so you want to find the right end to start pulling.

 

I've never weighed the balls I get from sweaters, but generally I get a grapefruit sized ball from each body piece and a softball size from each sleeve (assuming it's a long sleeved sweater) and depending on the size of the sweater. I usually look for Large or bigger... but any sweater size is still cheap yarn

 

 

 

There is a tutorial somewhere on the web, but I didn't like it bc she cuts the seams and there seemed to be too much waste for my tastes.

 

I have a purple chenille sweater I recently picked up to frog, maybe I can get hubby to take pics for me as I go. No idea when I'll get 'round to it though, I have a lot on my plate right now getting ready for a local craft fair.

[Stacey]

I've tried from the tutorial that's online somewhere but couldn't find an end to work with--definitely going to print out these instructions and try again. (I may or may not have ruined that sweater for good LOL but I'm going to practice on it before I kill any other sweaters!) Hopefully going about it a different way I'll find the end!

[seagull1993]

Your descriptions are very clear and I think they will be easy for me to follow. I am going sweater-hunting asap and find me some chenille yarn.

[Katandia]

Wow! That's the greatest duh idea I've heard! Why didn't I think of that earlier?

[carrieanne]

Great idea! Something to start looking for at garage sales!

[gypsy_queen]

i've thought of that before...it's just that alas, being a costume designer/couturier...i feel terrible anytime i 'recycle' anything...it has to be in some way imperfect...i buy jeans all the time to recycle, but they already have holes in them or something...unraveling sweaters takes a sweater that doesn't have holes...lol....that would defeat the purpose of unraveling it...so i'm stuck with just buying yarn...ho hum...

...Manda...

[natalie058]

You can frog a sweater with holes [An excellent reason to frog one in the first place, IMO]. You'll have a couple short strands of yarn, but that's all. It shouldn't make it harder or anything.