Sew Yourself A Dressed Up Sweat Shirt - Embellish a Sweatshirt with Cut Work

By Debbie Colgrove, About.com Guide

Dress up your inexpensive sweats using this cut work process and scraps of fabric. You'll want a whole new wardrobe of sweatshirts and sweat pants when you see how easy this technique is. It's also a great way to mask stains and make the stained garment a wearable garment.

Materials Needed

• A purchased sweat shirt
• Preshrunk cotton fabric -- Pre printed pillow panel or quilt style print fabric work great. You will need a square that measures, corner to corner, across the shoulders of the shirt. (
• Stabilizer if the fabric you are using is flimsy or doesn't have enough body
• Thread
• Trimming or applique scissors
• Pins

Find the center front of the sweat shirt.

Decide on the basic outline shape you want to use. One of my favorite applique template stashes are cookie cutters. To get a different size, trace the shape and use your computer or a copy machine to increase the size. Or check the Applique library for a shape you can use.

For this example I used a heart shape cookie cutter and arranged four hearts around the front neckline of the sweat shirt.

Center a corner of your fabric square on the inside of the sweat shirt at the center front and the opposite corners on the inside center back of the shirt. Place the other two corners on the shoulders so the fabric is laying flat on the shirt.

Use your shape design as a pattern or to transfer shape marking on the outside of the sweat shirt on top of the area that has fabric inside.

Stitch on the the outside edges of the shape.Make another row of stitching 1/8" from the first row.

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• Materials Needed
• Finishing

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