The Tale of the Badly-treated jumper

Hello everyone!

This is the sorry tale of a poor, badly-treated jumper. Don't worry, it has a happy ending.

My mother-in-law bought a gift for her husband, a lovely thick, warm Scandinavian jumper. Sized XXL, it fit him beautifully and was lovely and snuggly and warm.

Unfortunately, not long after being purchased, it went on a rather unwise trip through the tumble dryer, and came out somewhat smaller. It was no longer able to fit my father-in-law, but it was still a perfectly wearable jumper. So he gave it to my husband, who is slimmer than his father and it fit him nicely at the new size. We got strict instructions not to put it the tumble dryer.

My husband did not put it in the tumble dryer. He did, however put it in the washing machine at 40 degrees. Which theoretically should have been fine, but the jumper did not like that either, and shrunk even further.

So it now looked like this:

With the baggy lining (which did not shrink) and the changed dimensions, it no longer fit anybody nicely, even my children. But I didn't want to throw it away. So I hatched a plan.

In my Etsy shop, I offer cushions made from upcycled shirts and jumpers. So I decided to turn this shrunken jumper into a cushion and gift it back to my father-in-law for Christmas.

I removed the lining and measured it up. It turns out it had shrunk to almost exactly a 32 inch chest, which made it the perfect size for my 16 inch cushions. So there was no need to sew up the sides. All I had to do was lop off the collar and sleeves and sew up the top and bottom.

The material was still so thick that I couldn't get close to getting it under my sewing machine, so I stitched it all by hand. As the material had been practically felted by the washing process, it wasn't too tricky to sew, except around the zip.

And here it is finished!