Embellishing a patchwork vest - a recycling project

This weekend I started working on an embellished patchwork vest.

Originally, this was a 2nd-hand-sweater, a bit too loose and sloppy, but still comfortable to wear, thin knitwear and of a soft orange colour.

As I rather wanted a vest, I cut off the arms and secured the cuttings by punching a piece of a bright coloured, light-woven Chinese (!) shawl to it - other pieces of this shawl are found on the front and back of the piece. I then added some other scraps of tweed fabric from my stash - the colourful squares are from an old tweed skirt.

Here you can see a detail of the punched pieces.

As I neither did use any wool to bond it to the base/to the sweater, nor put the fabric overlapping, there are small gaps between the different pieces of fabric.

I therefore began filling in the gaps - and also securing the fabric scraps to the base - with strings of yarn, sometimes just punching the yarn into the gaps with the embellisher, sometimes embroidering with the yarn and then punching it from both sides, in order to "melt" it into the fabric layers.

As this is a real recycling project, I was careful to use odd yarn ends from my stash, of course ;-) ...

I think the black yarn is a good contrast to the very bright colours - I don't know why my camera doesn't bring out the colours "for real" - and still I expect them to become a bit more softened, when I finally punch it all from the backside, and the original orange colour melts into the front fabrics.

Due to the punching and the fabric scraps the vest is now getting sturdier and narrower, as I wanted and expected it to - and this time, wise from my first experiment (see earlier posting), I'm not using the coarse felting needles ...

I will keep you informed as the project proceeds!