Today’s post comes from Miranda of One Little Minute. Stop by her site for some awesome holiday crafting including a series of reindeer inspired projects!
You know what everyone needs this time of year? A pom pom beanie. Seriously, even people who live in warm and sunny places feel more festive and cozy during the holidays with a quirky, cool cap on their head. I made this one using an old sweater, some scraps of yarn, and an embroidery needle. It would make the perfect handmade gift for someone everyone on your list!
Supplies:
– A sweater (solid or print, any fiber content, any adult size)
– scissors
– one or two colors of yarn, about 5 yards total
– a large-eye embroidery needle
Cut up the side seams of the sweater about 12 inches on every seam. Cut across the sweater at 12″ height, making two rectangles. Wrap one around your head to get an idea of how big and tall in needs to be to fit (this can be estimated, since sweaters stretch!) then cut to fit.
Thread a strand of yarn through the needle. Fold the sweater rectangle in half with the right side of the fabric on the inside, and the raw edges aligned. Stick the needle through both layers of fabric and pull until you have about a 3″ tail left. Bring the needle back up on top, and stitch through both layers again. Continue this stitch (a whipstitch) up the length of the raw edge.
When you get to the top of the edge, start threading the needle up and down along the top raw edge.
When you have stitched around the entire circumference, pull the yarn tight, gathering the top edge.
Knot the end of the yarn by threading it through a little bit of sweater, creating a loop. Then, feed your needle through that loop and pull tight. Cut off about 1″ from the knot.
Thread the needle onto the tail at the bottom of the hat, and weave the end back up through the stitches you created.
This will secure the end so that the stitches don’t come undone! Flip the hat inside-out, and you’ve got a sweater beanie, simple as that!
The coolest part of a pom pom beanie though is, of course, the pom pom.
There are a million tutorials for making a pom pom out there, but I thought I’d show you how I do it. Wrap one color of yarn around your spread out fingers. Add the second color and wrap both until they are completely wrapped.
Slide the loops off your hand and onto a flat surface. Lay it on top of a 8-10″ length of yarn, and tie that yarn into a knot around the center of the loop, pulling it as tight as you can.
Hang onto those yarn ends, and cut the loops all the way around the pom pom. It will look like a mini mop.
To shape it up nicely, begin trimming the yarn into a ball shape. Once it’s pretty close to formed, roll it around in your hands for a while to tease out the longer pieces, and fluff up the fibers. Then go back and trim the final pieces off until it looks like a ball. Make sure you keep hold of those longer yarn ends, because you’ll need them!
Thread the needle onto one of the longer yarn ends that you were holding, and push the needle down through the top of the hat, so that the pom pom in centered over the gathered crown. Remove the needle and carefully do the same with the other yarn end. Now both ends should be on the inside of the beanie.
Tie the long yarn ends into a double knot and trim the ends to about 1″. Flip your beanie right-side-out. Check out your awesome new pom pom beanie!
There are so many awesome possibilities with this simple refashion. The look will be totally different with varying types of sweaters, and colors of yarn. The one I made is really light weight and will be fun to wear in the spring, too.
With Christmas still over a week away, you’ve got time to whip up one for every hip person on your list, and yourself! Enjoy!
Miranda is a wife, mom of two, and project addict who shares her adventures in crafting and life over at One Little Minute. She knows the value of time, so most of her projects, recipes, and adventures are aimed to be completed in less than a couple hours (or the length of a typical nap time.) She also sells her Maternity Countdown Tees, and her first sewing pattern in her Shop. Some of Miranda’s favorite things are sewing ( in her closet), cookies with ice cream, wearing stripes, and her cute family. Oh, and Instagram, of course! In addition to Instagram, you can keep up with Miranda on her blog, Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.
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