Project: Kate Spade Beeline Cardigan

I'm a Gleek! There, I admit it! What's not to love, right? I love the singing, the story lines, and the fashion of one Miss Emma Pillsbury! I love cardigans and she just wears the cutest ones ever! So I was watching an episode of Glee when I saw Miss Emma rock a particularly cute bee cardigan . . .

ADORE! OMG . . . I had to have it! So I googled "Glee Bee Cardigan", hahaha, seriously, that's all it took and lo and behold, found the exact one that she had on!

And OF COURSE, it's Kate Spade! And of course, it's like $295!! *sigh* guess I don't HAVE to have it! So, I gave up on it! And then for some strange reason one day, I decided to look for it again and hallelujah it went on sale for $118! Much more do-able, but of course, it was all sold out by the time I found out about the sale! UGH, anyways, while I was searching Miss Kate Spade's cardigan, I came across some DIY's of the sweater and being that I'm not entirely crafty, noticed that it is pretty easy to recreate! So here I go . . .

You'll need:

* basic sewing skills
* white embroidery floss ($0.35 at Michael's)
* sequin bee applique ($1.75 on ebay)
* black cardigan
* 2 hours

I actually went out and bought a nicer black cardigan because if I was going to spend all this time on a project, I wanted the cardigan to hold up and wear forever! But you can use an old one that you already have on hand. Carefully figure out where you want the bee and iron it in place. My sequin bee had little red hearts as antennae, which I didn't care for, so I cut them off. Use Kate Spade's stock photo to carefully stitch the path of the bee's flight. There were a lot of loops on the bottom right of the cardigan - I was getting tired of stitching and actually didn't like how there were so many, so I edited some of it out - so the end result is not an absolute exact replica, but close enough! Some people used a chalk pencil and drew the path first before stitching, but I just free-handed it because I didn't have a chalk pencil and it turned out okay! The finished results . . .

I absolutely love it! Super cute and easy to do and way less than $295!