By: Janome Maker- Meredith Daniel
Spring is the time of year when everything wakes from the winter slumber and bursts into life. Colors of every kind dot the landscape and, truly, it causes my heart to sing. I wanted to capture that in my latest project for Janome, and so the spring sweatshirt was born. Sewn on the Continental M7, this project utilizes the machines appliqué function to adorn a sweatshirt with cut florals and a quote from Lady Bird Johnson. You can take this same method to make bags, pillows, wall hangings, and much more!
Project Time – Intermediate, can be made in a couple of sewing sessions (several hours!)
Supplies –
- sweatshirt (mine is a cotton/poly blend from Target!)
- Fabric scraps or a fabric that has lots of flowers for cutting
- A piece of felt for the lettering
- 1/2 yard or less of an interfacing like SF101
- 1/2 yard or less of WonderUnder
- Fabric glue stick (optional)
- Pencil
- Scissors
- Threads that coordinate with the background of the floral pieces and one that matches the felt
- Template for quote (PDF linked below)
- Janome foot F for appliqué
Pattern – quote template.pdf
Notes: I would choose a sweatshirt that is not overly slinky. Some stability is going to be really helpful. If if presently has some embroidered design, you will want to plan to cover in your design, or you may want to use your seam ripper to remove it beforehand. I removed the “C’est la Vie” design partially after I decided on my layout, and covered the rest.
Additionally, note that this project as shown is not an afternoon project. Give yourself at least two sewing sessions to make this! I did all the cutting and arranging at one time, and then did an hours long stint at the machine. I would break up the time at the machine, if possible. That said, don’t let the time discourage you from this project! Think of it as a work of art that you are creating for yourself, and don’t rush it, but enjoy the process of creating. Keep plenty of chocolate close by.
To begin fuse your floral fabric or scraps to the SF101 interfacing. This will help to avoid future fraying. You may then fuse the interfaced back to the WonderUnder OR you may use the glue stick on the pieces once they are cut. I chose to use the glue stick method for the flowers and I saved the WonderUnder for the lettering.
Cut as many or as few flowers as you’d like, and begin placing them around the sweatshirt. This is where you can get really creative. You can have a smattering of flowers around the sweatshirt, or you can use elements of many fabrics to create single flowers, by layering and building. Don’t start fusing these down yet.
I found all of my flowers from a large scrap of Liberty fabric. I loved that there was a large variety of flowers, but they all had the same painterly style, which gave my project an aesthetically pleasing consistency. You may want to keep your flowers from the same collection of fabric, or the same designer for a cohesive look.
Next, use the template and pencil to trace the lettering onto the paper side of the WonderUnder. Yes, it is backwards on purpose! You can make your own quote here if you like! Just do the lettering backwards, and it will work the same way.
Fuse the WonderUnder onto your fleece. Make sure you are using the correct setting on your iron, which should probably be labeled “blend”, and simply hold the iron in place for about 10 seconds. Don’t use steam.
Once the WonderUnder is fused to the felt, cut out each letter using scissors or an Xacto knife or a mix of both. I found it easiest to cut with scissors, and then used the knife to help me with the little bits in the middle of the p’s, o’s, b, etc.
Once all the lettering and the flowers are cut, finalize your arrangement. If you are making a design that has overlapping pieces, you will need to fuse or glue your bottom pieces down and stitch before you continue to add more layers.
It’s time to begin sewing! Here I’m going to explain a number of options you have and then I’ll show you what I did. If you are at home with the free motion quilting foot, you can use that to stitch down your flowers. The pro for the method is that it ought to be quicker that appliqué, but the con is that you will be left with raw edges.
You could also “quilt” the flowers down if say, you have a layered design and then do the lettering on top. This method would create an entirely different look than what I have made, but could definitely look cool if the layout was right. This pro to this method is also the speed of it, and the con again is that raw edges would be pretty unavoidable. Another possible con is that it could create a rather stiff section of the sweatshirt.
Finally, you can do what I did here- use appliqué stitches with the F Foot to individually appliqué each flower and letter into place. I chose this method for a few reasons: first, it enclosed all the raw edges so I don’t have to worry about the designs lifting off the sweatshirt when worn or washed. Second, it is the method I feel most at ease with. Finally, I just love the clean look of it; the stitching sits nicely on the sweatshirt, and doesn’t compromise any of the fluidity of the garment when worn. Another pro for appliqué is that the Continental M7 (and most other machines) have a large variety of appliqué stitches to choose from, so you can achieve the same result with a variety of styles based on your aesthetic. The con to appliqué is the time- the remainder of the project is a whole lot of stitch > lift > pivot over and over again. It does take time.
So think about what you are most comfortable with, what is most pleasing to your eye, and I’m going to show you what I did to stitch.
Here are the two threads I used- cream color is an all purpose poly thread which I used on the lettering, and the pink is embroidery thread which is a finer thread with a slight sheen that I used for the flowers.
I chose applique stitch 10 which is a narrow satin stitch. I narrowed the width to 2.0. Using foot F, I aligned my cut flowers to the left of the opening on the foot, and stitched into place. You absolutely cannot drag the fabric. Instead, wherever there is a shift in direction, you must with needle down, lift the foot, pivot the sweatshirt, lower the foot, and continue stitching. Repeat this with all the cut flowers.
You can more easily use a straight stitch to outline the lettering, and you don’t need to worry about raw edges that way. I did choose to continue with the same appliqué stitch on mine, but with a matching thread. The letters aren’t very big, so the lift and pivot is tricky. My letters don’t look perfect, but you have to get pretty darn close to see that. If someone is close enough to see it, personal space has been invaded – ha!
Don’t forget to do the tiny bits in the middle of letters!
I hand stitched the comma into place because it was too tiny to tempt me to use the machine! I think for that, the hand stitches were probably faster.
Give it a final press, and you are ready to wear! No two projects will look the same, so please make sure to tag me (@thefooshe) and Janome (@janomeamerica) so we can see your sweatshirts! I am really looking forward to seeing the creativity from our community!
