A couple of years ago, my mother-in-law asked me to get rid of some of her old sweaters  that she had made a long time ago. I found a really pretty cardigan in the bag of discards, but it was way too small for me. I had the idea that if it were bigger I could make a vest out of it. I took the sleeves out and unraveled the yarn, undid the side seams of the cardigan and, with the yarn from the sleeves, I knitted two bands (one of which you can see at the top of the picture below) to put in the sides to make the old sweater bigger for a new vest.

But when I sewed in the bands to make the vest larger, the armholes were way too big.

I unraveled half of the bands and reknitted them to taper them and make them smaller at the armhole.

On the photo below you can see the cardigan taken apart at the side and the sleeves gone. At the top of the photo you can see one of the bands I knitted to insert at the side seams.

Still, there were lumps and bumps here and there.  I unraveled the two side bands I had knit (and reknit), and decided instead to crochet a piece into each side of the vest from the waistband to the armhole.

 

I see there are still a few lumpy parts, but they will flatten out once I wear the vest and it isn’t so freshly crocheted.

I’m really happy to have given a second life to the cardigan my mother-in-law knitted. She had put a collar and buttons and buttonholes on the cardigan and done a nice job  of knitting it, so I was happy to have been able to salvage it and get some more use out of it.

 

Just in time for the colder weather, I now have a new vest.