Sweater Hat & Leg Warmers Tutorial

This up-cycle craft is a great way to continue the love of a favorite sweater. For the tutorial example, we have a child who out-grew last season's winter wear. We took one sweater, transformed it in a few simple steps, and now have a hat with leg warmers for next season!

First, you will need a few tools to get you through this project: measuring tape, scissors, pins, chalk, and a sewing machine. You'll also need one sweater and thread.

GETTING READY: Turn the sweater inside out. Place it neatly on a flat surface.

DETERMINING THE WIDTH: Measure the head of the person, for whom you will be making the hat for. Subtract about 4 or 5 inches then divide that number in half. This will give you the measurement for the opening of the hat when it is laying flat, two sides together. In our example, the child's head is 20" around. 20 - 4 = 16. 16/2 = 8. See figure A to place your measurement. Mark your width with chalk.

DETERMINING THE LENGTH: We made a cone shaped hat, but you can make your hat as long as you want. The standard height is about 8 inches. Determine how long you want your hat, then make a mark at that height, in the center. On our example, we made the center mark at 4" (see Figure B). Then you will sketch a semi-circle with chalk (or cone shape like our example). Go pin crazy on the inside and outside of the chalk line, pinning both sides of the sweater together. This is when you will want to make sure you line up any patterns in the sweater (see Figure C).

LETS GET SEWING: Sew on the chalk line using a strait stitch on the stretch setting. Do not sew the bottom opening of your hat! In our example, we did not need to stitch up one side of the hat because we used the sweater's original stitching.

CUT IT OUT: Trim around your stitches about a quarter-inch. You should now have what looks like a hat inside out! Lastly, use the zig-zag stretch stitch over your quarter-inch edges to keep the sweater from unraveling (see Figure D). Turn the hat right side out and you're done!

MATCHING LEG WARMERS: Cut the sleeves off the sweater, close to the armpit (or at desired length). Sew a zig zag stretch stitch around the raw edge, but don't sew the two sides together (see figure E and F). Turn them right side out, and you're finished.