Simple cardigan makeover

I love cardigans. I can't get enough of them. My mommy staples seem to consist of tank tops (easy to lift up for nursing) and cardigans to cover up my arms (or the remnants of the baby belly that I'm still trying to lose). Now that it's getting pretty hot I needed a lighter sweater to pair with some of my tanks. This was a simple afternoon project. Making the ruffles took the most time but I was able to work on them while my little guy was practicing getting into trouble with his new-found crawling skills.

I started with this super-plain, super-thin cardigan from Old Navy. I think I paid $16 on sale. I liked how lightweight it was but it was too long (it came to the bottom of the front pockets of my jeans), I wanted shorter sleeves, and the deep-v with all those buttons wasn't very stylin'. I had to take action.

First, I shortened the sweater considerably. I knocked off the bottom few inches, including the bottom two buttons. I decided to use some fun blue thread to add just a touch of color. I like the double seam for something a little different.

Instead of pushing up the sleeves all the time, I made them elbow-length and added the same details as on the bottom hem.

Then came the ruffle. I've seen ruffles everywhere recently. I keep thinking about making a ruffle shirt like all the cute ones I see on Tea Rose Home.

Originally I was going to stack two ruffles, a wide one and this skinny one, but it was too much on this light sweater. The good news is that now I have an extra ruffle lying around ready to be used. This one is about 1.5" wide. I took off all the buttons except the top one and sewed the ruffle up the button placket. I used the blue up the middle to bring together all the stitching details. I left the edges raw so they would fray a little; I didn't want the sweater to be too stuffy or prissy for casual wear.

I'm super happy with how it turned out and I'm excited to share it on the Tea Rose Home link party. This was a quick and easy way to makeover a boring cardigan. What do you have in your closet that you want to transform?