Thursday 31 March 2011

Upclycling the sofa with a big woolly jumper!



I've been dying to show you the knitting project that I completed in February...at last I've got time. My big woolly sofa jumper. It was inspired by the Natural Gas Commercial that you can watch here.

Everyone looked a little confused when I began knitting huge fair-isle panels. I told 'A' my plan and as I was sitting knitting on the cold winter evenings he kept saying that if it didn't work I could always make cushion covers with the panels. I loved making it because It was random and I didn't have to follow a pattern. Best and worst of all, the wool was all recycled. I got it for a couple of pounds for virtually the whole sofa from Orinoco, The Oxfordshire Scrapstore. The 'best' thing was that it was recycling the wool had been donated from a mill but that was also the 'worst' bit... a kind of oxymoron...because it was all different thicknesses and some came on cones and was very fine so I had to use lots of strands together. Sometimes I would accidentally drop a strand and make a loop.

But I've knitted my soul into that cover and everyone loves it. 'A' wishes I'd bought new wool because it would be stronger and last longer and 'H' wants me to make her a really colourful one for her student house in London.

...I'm planning my next one now...

4 comments:

  1. Oh my! This is extraordinary Deb! I don't know what I'm most impressed by - the perserverance it must have taken to knit such a big project, the ingenuity of making it up as you go along, the thriftiness of the recycled wool or the skill involved in the fair-isle pattern. I'm in awe...

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  2. I saw the pic on my blog reader and thought, wow, that must have been one hell of a big jumper! What an incredible project - I think you'll have to knit matching jumpers (jumpsuits?) for you and A so you can camouflage into it...

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  3. Thanks both. It's funny you should mention camouflage jumpers Lucy. One of my sisters and I were making dresses from Japanese dress patterns yesterday. I had some fabric over and thought it would be a good idea to make cushion covers....I do sometimes over-do things....If I'm not careful my home could really look like the Natural Gas Advert.

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  4. Wow, I love it!! Best sofa I've ever seen!

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