sweater alteration

the sweater

I got a few more items from Aunt J  that  love but need to alter.  This sweater with the beautiful dark red color is one of them.  The problem is the little upside down v shape in the front of the hemline.  when I raise my hand to brush my hair out of my eyes (which I do a lot!) my belly shows. If I was 20 years younger (and 20 pounds lighter) it may not bother me so much.  But as it is...

the lace

I've been wanting to work with lace for a while now.  I'm turning 40 in a couple weeks and I've noticed my tastes have changed.  I'm trying to dress like an adult (my husband's words, not mine).  So I thought this might be a good opportunity to do so.  I couldn't find a wide band of lace at our local WalMart so I had to make some.  Knitting is tedious and time consuming so I decided to crochet it instead. I wish I had thread that matched the color of the sweater but I didn't so I used white.  White goes with everything, right? I found the pattern for this lace on Pinterest, which linked to this page.  I wasn't sure how much to make, but I wanted to possibly go around the sleeves to tie it together so I made more than I thought I needed.  It's a good thing I did!

carefull!

I used the crochet thread that I made the lace with to sew it by hand to the inside hem of the sweater.  I used a small yarn needle.  It doesn't have a sharp point to snag on the threads and it has an eye big enough for the thread to go through easily.  First I turn the sweater inside out, then I slightly stretched the fabric before inserting the needle through 2 little threads at a time then back through the lace. I probably shouldn't have done that because being the hem of a sweater, it won't be stretching at all so the lace didn't need to have room to move.  If I had left it alone I may have had enough left over to go around the sleeves like I had planned.  It turns out that I had exactly enough to go around the bottom!

finished! you can see that "V" now

I wasn't planning on a ruffle, but I do like it as it turns out.  I think a tiny bit of skin still shows, but I'm much less self-conscious about it now.  Yesterday I wore another of Aunt J's sweaters and it was cut a bit high also.  I'm working on another strip of lace (my own design this time) to put around the bottom of it.  Do you alter your clothing?  I'm rather new to this but I'm having loads of fun!

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