85 Bears Sweaters

November 7, 2006 7:37 PM

How difficult would it be to find someone to make a few of these?

I'd like to have a few chicago bears sweaters for my family members much like this one: http://preview.tinyurl.com/yb3k67 How difficult would it be to find someone who could do this and around how much time/money would it cost per sweater?

posted by nyu2 to Clothing, Beauty, & Fashion (5 answers total)

I'm a knitter, and looking at it, I'd have to say it probably would not be inexpensive. The pattern itself wouldn't be too tough, (some stripes, intarsia for the "BEARS" logo), but sweaters are pretty labor-intensive, and depending on what kind of yarn you used, that would run up the price as well (100% acrylic yarn would cost less than a nice wool blend, for example)

For what it's worth, if you wanted get an estimate, you might want to go to any yarn store in your area, and see if they have people who do work on commission, and get an estimate.
posted by Lucinda at 8:01 PM on November 7, 2006

To add upon my answer, I made a sweater with the same sort of skills required to make your sweater (this one here, from Stitch 'n Bitch) in sixteen days. But it took a lot of hours in those sixteen days. The yarn cost about $40, but it was really cruddy yarn and it pilled a lot.
posted by Lucinda at 8:07 PM on November 7, 2006

I work in a yarn store (in Australia), and for a man's jumper of that sort we'd probably charge AUD $200-250 just for the knitting. I know that sounds like a lot, but you're probably talking about twenty hours of knitting. (And that's for me, who's a fast knitter.) And even that isn't paying the knitter minimum wage! Then you're probably looking at another AUD $75-100 or so for the yarn. Yeah, you could save money by using cheap acrylic, but if you're gonna pay for the knitting, you might as well get a decent garment out of it that's going to last you a while. Definitely go 100% wool, or at the very minimum a wool blend.

(Whenever I give this speech to a customer in the shop, they seem astounded that it costs more to knit a jumper than to buy one at Target. A lot of things have changed in the knitting world in the last twenty years. There are a lot of cheap machine knit garments coming out of Asia, and it's no longer economical to knit. We do it because we like it, and because hand knit garments fit better, last longer, and can be incredibly unique.)

To get back to the question - you can definitely get a sweater knit cheaper than I quoted you... if you know who to ask. There are plenty of old ladies who are happy to knit for a pittance. Maybe try on Craig's List? Look up your local knitting guild? You're basically going to be looking for a grandma who doesn't have anyone to knit for anymore, and who doesn't need the money as an incentive. They're around, but you'll have to do some work to find one...
posted by web-goddess at 8:18 PM on November 7, 2006

Perhaps contact someone on Etsy?
posted by paduasoy at 11:09 PM on November 7, 2006

You'd be a lot more likely to get such a project done by contacting some machine knitters. If you have a quantity of 5 to 10 sweaters in mind, a work at home custom machine knitter could probably turn out your order in a couple of weeks, at a reasonable cost per sweater (certainly not more than your eBay link).

One problem is that the Bears logo and the style of your linked sweater is NFL licensed merchandise. You'd have to change the look sufficiently to be non-infringing to keep yourself out of trouble, if any of your uses of the garments could be examined by a licensee.
posted by paulsc at 12:39 AM on November 8, 2006