Felted Wool Heart Scarves

Valentines's Day is coming. Perfect motivation to be creative - and with two sweet, sweet little girls in mind - the wheels started turning. I decided to make scarves for them out of felted sweaters. So off to Value Village to buy a few previously loved sweaters for the project. I was amazed at the apparently large number of people who wash - and dry - wool sweaters. By machine. In hot water. Seriously interesting. (There was even a lovely pink cashmere sweater from BCBG that I don't think had started life sized to fit a 2 year old.) Anyway, a stranger's loss was my gain since this was exactly what I was looking for. I chose six sweaters in shades and patterns that seemed roughly "valentine's-ish", carted them home and got to work.

Felting sweaters is easy and ... fun! (You get to do what you really shouldn't and it works out well. How often does that happen?!) Just toss the 100% wool sweaters in the machine with a healthy amount of detergent and run the cycle with hot water. Put them in the dryer on hot. Repeat. And voila! perfectly miniaturized sweaters that are nicely felted. I cut the sweaters apart at the seams, pressed them lightly, and cut out a bunch of 3" hearts from one sleeve of each sweater.

Next I lined the hearts up in a way that appealed to me and sewed them together using Pearl Cotton. I use 'sew' loosely because really I just made a couple of stitches and then tied a knot leaving the ends showing. Just for fun I embroidered an initial on each scarf.  Done! 

I would like to be all "Oh this old thing?" - kind-of-cool about this project but really I am pretty tickled with how it turned out. More "Look, look, look!" than cooly uncaring but, what's the big deal with cool?I love how the hearts look a bit like flower petals. I love how the little girls played all afternoon wearing their new scarves. More magic.