DIY: Sweater into a Cardigan

First, to make the Cardigan you will need:

-An old sweater

-Scissors

-Ribbon or strips of cloth

-Pins

-Buttons

-Sewing machine and thread

Note: Please excuse my poor indoor photography, the lighting in my apartment is atrocious.

Fold the sweater in half if you are not confident in cutting a straight line down the middle.

Cut strips of wide ribbon the length down the front of the once sweater. Fold it in half and slip it over the raw edge of the sweater. Also fold in the raw edges of the ribbon at the top and bottom to be hidden when you sew. I forgot on the bottom as you can see on the above picture, so if you do too, just fold it under and do a quick stitch across the bottom.

I used 1.5 inch width ribbon and only covered the very edge since the sweater was already fitted, this allows for a little wiggle room. However it does make your sewing a little more difficult.

IF your sweater was already too small, add larger sections of cloth instead of the ribbon.

Sew along the edge, hopefully where both sides of ribbon and the sweater all line up.

I made a little mistake and my ribbon was not all lined up so to fix it I simply added a lot more lines of sewing which made for a fun texture and detail.
I picked various buttons, but of course you can pick matching or not. I used a ruler to make approximately the same spacing. I used safety pins the mark the bottom of each button so I would know where to start for making button-holes on my sewing machine. If you don't have a button-hole setting on your sewing machine, I am sorry, you will have to look up how to do it by hand. It isn't so hard, it just takes a lot of time.

Trim up the edges and fold under any extra ribbon if you didn't when you sewed it on, then add the buttons. I overlapped the two ribbon sections and used a yellow marker to mark through the button hole where the button should be sewn. I also added some buttons along the shoulder seam for fun.

Finito!