I had saved this great idea on a Pinterest board that
Debi Ward Kennedy shared on her blog "Homeward Found":
(if you use the above photo for any reason, be sure to link it back to Debi's blog
with this link: http://homewardfounddecor.blogspot.com)
As, I was reading more closely exactly how to copy her idea,
I realized that Debi had gotten the idea for the vases in 2007
from Danny Seo. Danny is a green-living expert. He wrote about
using the cuffs of sweaters to cover candles in an article in
"Country Home" magazine. Here is a picture from his website
of the candles he shared about:
Both Debi and Danny emphsize that if you use sweaters to make "cozies" for your candles,
be sure to keep the sweaters away from the flames.
Not just a "home-made" look, retailers have also done
ceramic versions of the sweater vases, Anthropolgoie
and World Market just to name a couple.
Neither of these products are still currently available
So, my version of Debi's vases are a copy cat of a copy cat.
Debi writes that this project is fast, cheap and easy and it is.
No sewing at all! She also says that she has used
different color sweaters to put around the vases but that the
white/beige sweaters are her favorites to use in this project.
You might have some sweaters that you can recycle for this
project but I needed to find some sweaters at the thrift store.
Here are the arms (still attached) of the sweaters I'm using:
...and here they are cut away from the main part of the sweater:
These are the various vases/jars that are possible
candidates for the sweater vase project:
Debi used cylindrical vases so that's the first ones I attemped.
They are about the size of an adult's arm and the sweater slid
on easily. Debi says that you can keep the sweater smooth or
scrunch it up like leg warmers for another look. I was trying to
get as many vases covered as possible so I kept them smooth.
I left a little extra to turn up a hem but cut away the
excess to use it on another vase.
When I first read about cutting up sweaters for vases
(and I have seen them used for pillows too), I worried that the
knit stitches would unravel immediately but that did not happen.
Here is the bottom cut edge just turned under at the base:
The leftover arm part was put on a shorter vase.
To add some interest to the plain stitches, I turned a cuff
up showing the wrong or "purled" side of the sweater.
For most of each of the arms, I was able to get a tall vase
and a short vase covered with it. The pretty diamond weave
sleeves were only 3/4 long so they only covered one vase each.
There was not enough material to turn a hem so I put some
craft glue on the bottom to keep it from unraveling. I think
it could be covered with a ribbon to hide the raw edge.
Pulling the sweater arms over the vases reminded me of
dressing Barbie dolls when I was little. I can remember when
the first Barbies came out on the market.
It was fun "dressing" these various shapes of vases.
Because the knit of the sleeves is stretchy,
you can also pull it over curvy vases, within reason.
If you are having trouble squeezing a vase into a sweater arm,
start with the cut edge and not the cuff edge of the sleeve.
The cut edge is not as constricting and sometimes you can
sneak up from the backside of a cuff and get the vase in after all.
Another suggestion that Debi gave for getting a sleeve around
a larger vase is to simply wrap the sleeve around the vase and
then tuck the cut edge into the sleeve's cuff.
You can simply pin the cut sleeve edge into the cuff
on the backside (against the vase) and no one will see the pin.
I decided to use a winter brooch as the pin for this vase.
Just like last year when the daffodils bloomed in January in
Alabama, we have spring flowers peeking their heads out here
already. Some nights and early mornings are cold but in the
daytime, the temperatures can be in the 70's. I've carried
this idea into the sweatered-vases (winter) holding flowers
that normally bloom in the Spring.
Those of you who can sew even just a little bit could make
tubes out of the leftover sweaters that you cut the arms off
of to make even more sweater covers for your vases.