Recycling 'Make and Mend' in 2013

Sustainable, recycle, re-use, and eco-friendly are all current popular phrases about combating pollution and waste. 

Recycling in fashion is an idea that is being recycled...

 During the Second World War the British and Americans were encouraged to recycle fabrics from garments in the Make and Mend campaign.

Fast forward to the 21st century and here is my 2013 Make and Mend recycled garment. 

The original sweater was a turtle neck and much too hot for SoCal.  But, I really liked the color combo of the sweater so I carefully removed the sleeves. I found a great black denim shirt at a thrift shop and removed the shirt sleeves and attached the sweater sleeves. 

The finished recycled garment is perfect for casual California lifestyle and weather.

With the success of my first recycle I eyed another sweater I loved but, was getting ratty. 

Once again I carefully removed the sweater sleeves and also the sleeves from a denim shirt purchased from a thrift shop.

Sewing the sweater sleeves into the armhole was again surprisingly simple and again I really loved the end result.

Recycle garment #2

Well now I had these nice denim sleeves so I went to my favorite resale store and found this great sweater by Cabi and you guessed it...I removed the sweater sleeves. 

*note* it is critical the sweaters have set-in sleeves with a seam between the sleeve and the armhole.

Fitting the woven denim sleeve into the knit armhole was a little challenging because the armhole grew as soon as the sweater sleeve was removed. A simple running stitch ( pink thread ) allowed me to pull up the sweater armhole until it was the same size as the denim sleeve head.

The sleeves and sweater were sewn together and again I am very pleased with the end result.

So pleased I think I will re-activate my Etsy store ( Lemon Twist ) and see if I can sell them...

Of course I made all these recycled sweater/denim tops over a period of time because I always have at least five projects going at once. In between these sweater shirts I was in San Francisco and could not resist this jacket. 

A commercially made sweater denim combo.

Nothing is ever new in fashion!