Re-Knitting - How to reuse yarn from other garments

Mrs Sew and Sew's guide from the 1940's, reknitting with wool from old garments

The other day, I managed to get 585 grams of cotton yarn for just £1.10.

It took me several days to get that amount of yarn; it would have been quicker and easier just to buy the skeins from my local haberdashery or online, however at the time of posting, one 20g ball of cotton DK yarn was on sale for £1.08, so to get the similar amount would have cost me over £30.

So how did I get it so cheaply?

At one of the charity shops close to my home, they have a 'bargain basket' where any items that haven't sold for several weeks end up, selling for £1.10 each (it used to be £1, but I guess that's inflation for you).

I assume that after that, they end up going into the rag trade and possibly landfill, so I often have a rummage in there to see if there's anything I can recycle and save from going to waste.

This particular time, I came across a jumper in a lovely green colour. It was missing a button on the shoulder, which is probably why it hadn't sold, but was made from 100% cotton yarn. I bought it with the plan to pick it apart, unravel it and reuse the yarn for another project.

At round about a similar time, I came across the above image on Pinterest of Mrs Sew-and-Sew and her tips on reusing wool. The character of Mrs Sew and Sew appeared in the early 1940s in pamphlets and short films, informing the public on how to reuse textiles to make and repair clothing when rationing made it hard to get hold of new wool and fabric.

I decided to follow the hints as laid out in Mrs Sew and Sew's guide to re-knitting. It wasn't the first time I was reusing yarn, but it was the first time using this process to try to get the crinkles out of the yarn that are left from it's previous life as another garment.

Hint 1 - Unpick Seams. Unravel the knitting, unwinding the wool round a tray or a dress box lid.

Unpicking the seams of the jumper took a little longer that expected. The same cotton yarn was used to sew the seams together, so I had to judge which was a seam stitch and which was a knit stitch so I didn't accidentally start ripping apart the main fabric.

I wound the yarn into balls as I unravelled the jumper. Some were tiny as I had unpicked the wrong sort of stitch, while others were hefty.

To wind it up into skeins, the only thing I had available was an oven tray I've had since my university days, but it did the job!

Hint 2 - Tie it into skeins, using several knots.

After I wrapped the yarn around my baking tray, I used offcuts of the yarn to tie it together so it didn't unravel as I took the skein off the tray and washed it.

Hint 3 - Wash the skeins in lukewarm suds, squeezing gently until the wool is clean. Rinse twice in water of the same temperature.

I placed all the skeins in the bath in tepid water with a small amount of laundry detergent. I didn't squeeze that much as I was concerned about accidentally undoing the knots, or getting the skeins tangled up. After 30 minutes or so, I drained the bath and then gently rinsed the skeins one by one with the shower head.

Hint 4 - Dry skeins by stringing them together and pegging them on a line or hanging on two hooks. It's best to dry outdoors. Shake gently now and then to prevent tangling.

Before hanging out the skeins, I gently squeezed as much water as I could out of them as I took them from the bath, before placing them on an old bath towel in a line. I then rolled up the towel like a burrito, squeezing out more water as I went.

I then pegged them directly onto the washing line and left them to dry for a couple of hours. Even though the crinkles weren't entirely gone, they were definitely looser than before. Many of the skeins were dry in the afternoon, however the thicker ones took another 2-3 days before they were fully dry.

Hint 5 - Wind into loose balls and reknit

As a birthday present to myself, I bought a manual yarn winder off eBay. I was excited to try it out to wind up the skeins into neat balls of yarn that I started using it as soon as it was delivered with the skeins that were dry.

After figuring out the instructions and getting into a few tangles, it felt quite therapeutic winding up the yarn, and my husband and daughter often found me sat in the living room watching TV with a growing pile of balls next to me. The size of the winder was good for small balls of 100g or so; anything larger and the yarn would get caught in the cods underneath.

The whole process from unpicking, unravelling, winding, washing, drying and winding again, took a lot longer that I originally anticipated. In all it took me about between a week to a week and a half to do it, however I was fitting it in around work and family life and was only able to concentrate on it in the evenings.

This way of recycling old knitted garments and reusing the yarn is such a good money saving idea as well as contributing towards reducing the amount of textile waste that end up in landfill or in the incinerator. I am now currently knitting my next project with this yarn and I'm already on the look out for more items I can unravel and reknit.