Copycat Cardigan

    Winter is still lingering here in Utah, which most people here fairly loathe. But of course, I love it because it means...more time for sweaters! And this is the time of year where you can get crazy discounts on winter clothes, which makes me even happier.
    My daughter, Lucy, has an adorable friend named Abby. She came over the other night to pick up Lucy and stopped me dead in my tracks when I saw the cardigan she was wearing.

     I fell in love with it! She said she bought it in California for $35.00 at a boutique store, and since I am pretty sure I won't be there anytime soon, I knew what I had to do. I had to re-create that cardigan somehow, by gosh. So I grabbed my camera and had her pose for me. I love how it looks nautical and classy, and so timeless that a teenager or even a mom (me:) could wear it. I was so psyched to figure it out I could hardly stand it.

    So I went to Savers and headed right to the grey sweater section, found it, and it cost about $4.00. Joy! I am so inspired by the way they display their clothes in sections of color, that I do that with my own closet. It makes getting dressed and grappling around in my closet at o'dark hundred soooo much easier. But I digress...

    Then I ran over to JoAnn's and got new silver buttons and black bias tape (double fold) for the piping. Remember, I am NOT a sewer. I am a gluer. So I figure out fast and easy ways to cheat on things by just gluing them. There is a downside to this and I will talk about it later. Gulp.

I DO know how to sew buttons on,(thanks mom!) and so I switched out the buttons. I then eyeballed the size of the little pieces that go between the buttons and cut, folded and glued those into the right shape. I glued those on first (I did one less than I meant to...my bad). Then I glued the piping all around the sweater. Done!

     I had Lucy model the finished product, which is so fun to wear! I get tons of compliments on it, and am happy to say I spent about $12.00 total on it.
      Oh yes, the downside to gluing ornamentation onto sweaters. Someday, you'll actually have to wash the thing. Handwashing works, but just to be safe I went back in and hand stitched it on from the inside. Made me feel a little better about washing it.

     Here is a closer view of both of them side by side. The original on the left and the copycat on the right. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It's not exact, but who would know, right? And thanks to my cute models Lucy and Abby!

    
And p.s. Sorry about the ugly, empty space on the left side of the blog. I applied to put ads in there and evidently it takes them a looong time to figure out what goes there.