I am slightly addicted to thrift shopping.  Not only is it a great place to get home goods and kids clothes but I think it is a great place to get fun fabrics and shirts for yourself.  I find that I like to shop in the large and xlarge section because I can always just take the clothing in to fit my size and you end up with a more custom piece of clothing.

On a recent trip to Value Village I found this Banana Republic sweater for $7 and thought I could do something cute with it.  I had seen this pin for a sweatshirt that was refashioned and was inspired by the zippers on the shoulders.

 

As you can tell the sweater was definitely not my size.  Not only is it way too big but the sleeves are too long as well.

 

Step one was to put the sweater on inside out and pin where I wanted the sweater fit to.  Once I did one side I just mirrored the marks to the other sides so they matched.  Because I wasn’t confident on my measuring skills I decided to just run a basting stitch with my sewing machine to check the fit before running it through the serger.  It was good that I did this because I ended up needing to make some adjustments to the body of the sweater, sleeves and most importantly the arm pits.

 

 

Once I was happy with the results I ran the seams through my serger and was left with a much better fitting sweater.  I am still having arm pit issues with the sweater, I just can’t seem to get them right.  I think I might take a sweater that fits me well and mimic the under arm area to this sweater.  Regardless of the underarm issue it is still a much better sweater than before.

 

I decided to take a couple heavy duty zippers and add them to the shoulders as a fun addition.  My zipper skills are not great but the end result was exactly what I was going for, a well fitting sweater with a fun detail.

Question to all of you about the finished sweater.  I think the colour of this sweater washes me out, do you think I could die the sweater with RIT die?