Red Recycled Sweater Blanket

Twenty minutes in a thrift store, fifteen dollars, three red wool sweaters, several cycles in the wash, cutting and fitting pieces–Tetris with wool–produced asymmetrical lines, a felted crazy quilt. This recycled sweater craze has got me thinking: is felting old sweaters that great of a “recycling” project? All that cycling around in the washing machine certainly uses many gallons of water and power. Those who are ecologically-craft minded, might initially be drawn to this kind of project for the “recycled” appeal, but there is a wider “eco-footprint” involved. I guess this is true of many “crafts.” But knitting/felting still has a utilitarian appeal, for me, which other arts do not. Blankets, bags, sweaters, hats, gloves are functional items. Everyday use. Well there’s my soap box moment.

In the picture (above) I’ve pinned my felted pieces together before zig-zag sewing them in place (below). The pinning process took the most attention and time because I wanted to get all my pieces hooked together in a shape that resembled a throw, but that wasn’t too perfectly square. I avoided the “perfect square” mostly because it would have been challenging to create and would have required me to cut small pieces to fit gaps and I didn’t want a lot of left-overs.

This is my grand puzzle spread out on my floor in solid shades of red. Asymmetrical lines that look unintentional remind me of cutting fabric without attention to the print on that fabric. That said, I’m not technically astute enough to cut said printed fabric, so I opted for print-free sweaters as a solid color is more forgiving. The thing I’ve noticed with cutting out felted squares from patterned knit is that the pattern doesn’t always line up well with the edges of the square (or shape you’ve cut out for your blanket). For example, stripes, when felted in a sweater tend to bow slightly, so when they are cut into squares for a felted quilt, the stripes look like rainbows. With the 90 degree angles of a quilt made from squares, juxtaposed against the “bowed stripes” looks askew. This can certainly add charm to a felted quilt, but I was looking for something more intentionally asymmetrical.