Finding a Sweater to Deconstruct

I love the price of wool and cashmere sweaters at thrift stores and the Goodwill Outlets (affectionately called the Bins where they sell merchandise by the pound).

I have deconstructed (or started the deconstruction of) several adult-sized sweaters to harvest the yarn.  The first was a cotton sweater that I deconstructed for the Harvest Fabric BB so while it fit the requirements of the Unravel an Old Sweater BB, it has already been showcased on another BB so I went to the Bins where I found several candidates.  

a beautiful cashmere cardigan but the yarn and chain stitch thread were so small in diameter that I would inadvertently cut the sweater yarn so that I ended up with lots of short pieces.  
a beautiful white sweater ended up being piecework too - similar to granny squares but triangles - so lots of short pieces there too.  

Then I was given a short-sleeve blue sweater that was not flattering.


The seams were perfect so I started deconstructing.


It was a cotton/ramie blend so I unstitched the seams...

and when I finally got a free end to run the burn test - it melted.  That coupled with the difficulty in getting each knit stitch to let go, I decided to pick another sweater.

After spending the weekend with my Mom, we went to one of her local thrift stores and I found a purple pullover sweater that was mostly cotton with a few blocks of cotton/acrylic/metallic yarn.  The acrylic was less than 1/4 of the front so I decided to invest $2 and take it apart.  I did a burn test and the majority of the sweater was (likely pure) purple cotton.  You can see the results here and I harvested 18 ounces of purple cotton.  Finally Success!  


Feel free to share your sweater stories.