Fun Ways to Make Over Old Sweaters

While you’re busy knitting yourself a new sweater, you might start to think that your old sweaters aren’t looking so great. Maybe you’ve juts worn the same ones for years and would rather see a different look, or maybe there’s a stain or a hole in a noticeable spot that you want to patch or cover up so that you can continue to wear the sweater. Hooray for making do!

Apartment Therapy has a great round up of options for remaking sweaters.

The good news is if you know a little duplicate stitch or cross stitch you can easily cover a hole or a stain or just give a sweater a completely different look without a whole lot of effort. What could be better than that?

It’s also a great way to make a store bought sweater look more unique, until you get to where your wardrobe only has handknit sweaters in it. (That will happen someday, right?)

[Photo from Karen Barbé via Apartment Therapy.]

Over the years I have shared a lot of pumpkin knitting patterns, and I’ve knit and crocheted a lot of pumpkins myself. But it feels like there are always more fun things to try with knit pumpkins, so this year I wanted to look a little more beyond basic stockinette or ribbed pumpkins and share some pumpkin patterns with cables, bobbles and colorwork.

In the cable collection we’ve got these cute little basic cable and ribbed pumpkins from Elly Bear Knits. There are two sizes that make a wide, flat pumpkin and a taller round pumpkin. Both are worked in the round as a tube that’s cinched top and bottom when you’re done, and they use bulky weight yarn.

Another cute cable pumpkin knitting pattern comes from Gray Bear Akswokrat. This one is knit flat and it looks like a chunky yarn but you could use other weights to make pumpkins of different sizes. This one also has an I-cord stem and uses yarn to cinch up the sections of the pumpkin, giving it a more natural look.

Add some bobbles to your pumpkins with this design from Autumn Shelter Makes. Also worked in the round in a tube, it features a repeating pattern of bobbles and uses yarn wrapped around the outside to make segments. This one looks like worsted weight yarn to me.

Of course there’s nothing that says your pumpkin has to be a single color, so let’s throw in some colorwork. I love the look of the Cozy Fall Pumpkin knitting pattern from South Stitch Girls. The little leather loop adds a rustic touch but you could also just add a stick. These pumpkins have five colorwork options and are worked in worsted weight yarn in the round.

There’s also the Autumn Fair Isle Trio pumpkins pattern from Equestriann Style, which has three different sizes of pumpkins with four colorwork designs. They are worked in super bulky yarn in the round and look good with high contrast or more muted color combinations.

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