Refashion a Crewneck Sweatshirt

 Today I snagged a bit of time to do something I'd been wanting to try for a long time! In fact I have an entire Pinterest board dedicated to ideas for repurposing/refashioning old or dated clothing. Luckily this particular project was SUPER easy and only took about an hour or two, I may have a had a little helper that was mildly distracting.

She's such a good helper :-p

 I've had an Old Dominion University crewneck sweatshirt kicking around for some time now and wanted to find someway to make it fun to wear. Low and behold there was a pin on my Refashioned Clothing board that was perfect for the challenge. Below is my inspiration:

17 Cheap Ways to Make Your Sweatshirts Cute AF

Here's a photo of the back of the sweatshirt I started with, I was so excited to get started I forgot to take a picture of the front (womp womp).

I began by finding the center of the sweatshirt and then cut that lovely line right up the back but stopped about 2-3 inches before I got to the collar. 

At which point I found some ribbon that I had in my ribbon stash, this particular ribbon was left over from my hunt for the perfect ribbon sash for my wedding dress. As you can see in the above photo I had formed the bow and was thinking about its placement. I was also hemming and hawing over whether to cut the collar off or not.

After rifling around in my ribbon and trim stash, I found some cute lace trim left over from a Merida costume I made for a friend. With this lovely little discovery I bit the bullet and cut the collar off of the sweatshirt and used the trim to finish off the raw edge. Lucky for me I had just enough of the trim to also finish off the raw edge of the cut I made up the back. Once all the trim was sewn on I cut the opening in the back so that it was about an inch away from the new collar edge and hand stiched the bow onto the back at the collar right above the cut on the back.

Finished project front

Finished project back

This sweatshirt turned out cuter than I expected and I am now super excited to wear it everywhere! Before it was just my laundry day or campfire sweatshirt, but now it looks cute and fashionable with its pretty lace and flirty open back. As I said earlier this project was SUPER easy and did not take long at all. I am very much looking forward to doing more of these refashion projects. Not only was it awesome to be able to use up some left over trimmings in my stash but I also was able to make this entirely for free with what I had lying around. If you have any old crewneck sweatshirts lying around needing new life, this is definitely a fun way to do it!