Turning Vintage Blankets into Scarves
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My first thoughts around repurposing vintage blankets into up-cycled scarves sort of came to me by accident. I had seen various incredible designers doing similar work (the likes of Lydia Bolton who makes incredible cardigans and skirts out of second hand knits, definitely check her out!) and I always watched on in total amazement, but felt intimidated tackling anything knit related as it had been years since I’d worked with it in any capacity.
But then the thought came to me when I was staring at this vintage, granny square crochet blanket I’d had for a few years — I got it from the vintage section of an Oxfam a few years ago and while I loved it, it had quite a few holes and was beginning to unravel. Sad that it was gathering dust and getting itchy feet to do something with it, one evening in December a complete notion took over me — I grabbed some old wool, an embroidery needle and a seam ripper and just went at it.
That became this collection of scarves from my first scarf drop!
From there I got such a bug to do some more, but I knew I had to be patient to source the right second-hand pieces to work with. I took some time to scour through Facebook marketplace and Ebay for the perfect blankets to fit my criteria — I was looking for blankets that had interesting colour combinations and were made using crocheted granny squares, but I also wanted to keep an eye out for any that had a few flaws that needed fixing.
Once I had my blankets, the real work began. Something I learned the first time around is that this is a deceivingly time-consuming process.🥲 I carefully examined each one, noting any holes or loose threads that needed fixing and pinning them so I wouldn’t lose track.
I then dismantled the sections of squares into long and short strips, so I could place various colour combinations I liked together to build up the length of the scarf. I learnt the hard way that it’s so easy to snip the wrong piece of wool and accidentally unravel a whole chunk before you even realise, which is so disheartening and annoying when you’ve been trying to fix something, so being super careful was key. The more I do these blanket > scarf rehabilitation projects, the less I’m hoping this happens.🤞🏻
Then I used a combination of hand stitching and machine sewing to mend the sections back together and fix up any holes, loose threads or rough patches along the way using as much of the original wool as I could salvage. While this whole process definitely takes a while, it’s so rewarding and actually really relaxing! Chucking on a podcast and making endless cups of coffee definitely saw me through.
These videos below (are super fast I’m sorry idk what happened, I’m actually sat here cackling at how manic they are 🙃) show me untangling some wool I’d unraveled from the original edging of one of the blankets, so that I could repurpose it when making the scarves. I then used a large hand sewing needle to blanket stitch some of the squares back together by hand.
Finally, I made a few finishing touches, like adding tassels and hand washing each scarf to make them super soft and ready to send on to their new home. (Speaking of! Please be careful when washing your scarf. Hand wash or pop it on a cool wool wash and don’t tumble dry, pop it flat across a warm radiator if you can)
The process of repurposing vintage crochet blankets into up-cycled scarves was a learning curve to begin with but in the end so rewarding. It required a lot of time, patience and attention to detail, but the end result was well worth it. Plus, it feels so good knowing that I'm giving new life to something that might have otherwise been thrown away!
