My scraps stash is out of control. What once fit neatly into my storage cabinet now tumbles out onto the floor, dangling sad tendrils of leftover fabric for the cat’s amusement. It’s time to de-stash and get creative.

I had a good bit of knit leftover from a dress and decided to make a shirt. (Here’s what I used: https://www.fabric.com/buy/0431156/cotton-lycra-spandex-knit-thunderbolt-sage) Nerdy tangent – these lightning bolts remind me of Harry Potter, so I think of this project as the Scraps Who Lived.

I love the Astoria sweater from Seamwork magazine. Its quick, functional and cute. And for this purpose, the bodice is simple and easy to manipulate.

Astoria is a cropped sweater, so I lengthened it considerably, gradually flaring the new side line out towards the new hem by roughly an inch. There was no need for the waistband anymore so I left that out.

I also made the collar deeper by cutting the neckline at the adjacent lower size, then lengthened the neck band to match. The sleeves I obviously just cropped to a shorter length.

I ended up cutting the sleeves on what I thought was a bias, which I figured would look cool, and inadvertently matched one sleeve to the bodice perfectly. Happy accidents!

It was an easy project and very fast – maybe an hour since the pattern was already cut. I’ll definitely keep it in mind for future scraps.

xo