Sweatshirt Fun

I love playing with sweatshirts - they are cheap and a lot of fun to "decorate".  Sweatshirts are so versatile and you can do just about anything to them.  When you want to sew and don't have a lot of time or don't want to spend a lot of time sewing you can start with a sweatshirt.

I am coffee lover and have a friend that is a coffee lover also so I had her in mind when I started this sweatshirt - I was going to surprise her with this quick and fun gift,  Did you notice the "I was".  I decided I couldn't part with this one after I made it.  Oh well I will make her another.

How I Did It

I started with a basic $6 or $7 sweatshirt that looked similar to this one (I forgot to take pictures of the hot pink sweatshirt before I started altering it).  The white streaks you see on the sweatshirt are the sunlight shining through the window.

The embroidery design I used is from Urban Threads Coffee Break Design Pack.  This is the first time I have ever stitched out one of their designs and the digitizing was exceptional (imho).  I am not a digitizer but I have stitched out enough designs to know when I have one that has been properly digitized.

I used various shades of Madeira 40wt rayon purple threads.  I did not want "hoop burn" so I used a sticky back Floriani stabilizer and put the sweatshirt on top of the hoop and did a tack down stitch around the hoop to hold the sweatshirt in place before starting the embroidery stitch out.  The embroidery software I used was Artistic Suite Pro.  I did not make any design changes I just used the software to select the fabric I was stitching on.

I removed the original collar ribbing and added a purple collar ribbing from the bottom edge of a previous sweatshirt that I had altered.  Always save the ribbing you remove from your sweatshirts because you can use them as design elements on other projects.  I added a "lettuce edge" to the top of the collar using my serger and 2 spools of wooly nylon thread and 1 spool of regular serger thread.  I did top stitching around the collar using Sulky 30wt cotton thread.  I lengthened the stitch to 4 mm to accommodate the thickness of the thread.

I removed the ribbing from the sleeves and intended to do a "lettuce edge" but it did not turn out like I expected.  Next time I know to increase the differential feed on my serger.

I removed the ribbing from the bottom edge and turned up the edge about 3/4 inch and stitched again with Sulky 30wt cotton thread lengthening the stitch to 4 mm.

I was please with the outcome.  It is still a loose fitting very comfy sweatshirt with added detail that kicks it up a notch.  This was so much fun to create and it allowed me to sew without "really sewing".