I want to embellish some recycled wool longies

[NightOwl]

I want to embellish some recycled wool longies. What are my options? (I'm very new at this stuff!)

[Sophiasmomma]

well you can use small pieces of the rest of the sweater if its different colors(or you can dye it if its light colors) and just sew it onto the pants. Or you can buy wool threading and stitich embellishments onto them like wahms do. also you could use pieces of fleece too

[dani76]

:

[NightOwl]

Would it be possible to use other fabrics for appliques? Could you use embroidered patches? (so very new at wool! )

[Shiloh]

I get some really cool crocheted appliques - trucks flowers you name it from my local craft store they come with buttons but I cut them off the buttons and sew the appliques on tight.

you could try rick rack, i got some really nice chenile rick rack from (walmart...but its so nice

ruffles if you got girls

[Jes'sBeth]

I cut shapes out of contrasting wool either from leftover wool sweaters or this round I'm using wool felt that I picked up at the local waldorf school sale. The colours are really bright. I like to have themes for each pair of longies. Our daughter has a simple spiral on one pair (that was my first embellishment) she has flowers on a butt sweater. Another pair has her name on the but and stars in 2 different colours around her name and on the front. The last is the most complex one I've done and is an underwater theme. It's got a simple sailboat on the butt and then a whale, octopus and seahorse on the front. I was really happy to see the end of the octopus legs!

I'm making some for a gift exchange right now and am putting the children's names on them along with fun designs. One has a monkey holding a banana in a tree, another will have those colourful frogs and another has African animals on it. I just look through clip art until I find a simple design and then modify it so it can be cut out of one colour. It works a charm! You can see my first appliqued longies here

[AngelBee]

Beth...those are super cute!!!

Ok....so you sew the wool pieces on. Do you use a sewing machine or do it by hand?

What kind of thread?

This is all new to me too :

[Jes'sBeth]

I do them by hand. it takes awhile, especially with the complicated shapes like the octopus. You could probably put them on by machine but sometimes the shape is in an awkward place for machine sewing. I just stitch around the edges. If you look really closely at them you can often see the stitches but usually you aren't close enough to notice.

I use polyester thread to make sure it doesn't wick. Nylon would work too but since I use polyester for lots of stuff, I have a ton of it and am starting to get a good number of colours.

Once wool is felted, you can just cut and there's no need to finish the edges. It doesn't unravel so you just cut and sew. It's kind of like making a mosaic. You can do anything... as big or as little as you like.

[amberthesugarcat]

Originally Posted by Jes'sBeth

It works a charm! You can see my first appliqued longies here

Those longies and butt sweater are beautiful! You are so talented. What patterns did you use for both of them? Now I want to try embellishments.

[Jes'sBeth]

patterns for the longies and butt sweater themselves? I used the tutorial at babyluv (I found it the easiest to understand of the 2 I found)

I didn't use a pattern for the pictures... I just drew the flower freehand (it's my BEST drawing ) and then cut it apart and cut the parts out of wool scraps. The other pictures I found pictures online or in my word processing package and printed them off, simplified them a bit so I only needed one colour, cut them out in paper, then out of wool.

As long as you keep the shapes simple, they turn out really well. The complicated designs are much more difficult. I try to stay away from things that require more than one colour per picture unless it's leaves or petals or big things...

Really, it's more time consuming than anything.