Working on a large scale project, I began to need more yarn than I had previously collected and I needed to come up with a way to source larger quantities of yarn while still maintaining my commitment to using secondhand materials. I began to purchase sweaters from thrift stores to scrap them for parts and discovered that unraveling industrially produced sweaters was fairly easy and produced great results. With basic knowledge of how knitted garments are constructed, it only takes a brief examination of the seams of the sweater to determine if it is possible to turn a finished garment into a single strand of unraveled yarn.
In total, ten sweaters found new forms over the course of this project. Below are a selection of the ones I remembered to photograph before taking apart.
