How to Sew a Christmas Sweatshirt with Appliqué: Easy Step-by-Step Guide
What you'll need:
- Sweatshirt fabric and tubular ribbing, or a ready-to-wear sweatshirt
- Sweatshirt Sewing Pattern
- Bondaweb
- Fabric for your appliqué letters
- Coordinating thread for the appliqué and for sewing your sweatshirt
If you’d like to use the same fabrics I picked for this jumper, they’re available in my shop:
Choose your sewing pattern
Start by choosing the pattern for your sweatshirt. There are plenty of great options, my favourite at the moment is the Megan Nielsen Jarrah which I’ve used here. If you’d prefer you can simply add the appliqué to a ready-to-wear sweatshirt but depending on the fit you may need to unpick the side seams to give yourself enough room to sew the appliqué neatly.
If you’re making your sweatshirt from scratch, cut out all pattern pieces and transfer any markings. Don’t forget to mark the centre front as you’ll need this later.
Decide on your wording
What festive word or phrase would you like on the front? I went for "Ho Ho Ho" but Merry, Fa La La, Jolly would all work nicely.
In Word or Canva type out your chosen text in a bold, chunky font so that the letters are easy to cut out and sew. I used Impact at size 190. Print it out at full size.
Prepare your applique
The bondaweb has a paper side and a rough glue coated side. Place your printed lettering face down on the table and trace it onto the paper side of the Bondaweb.
Lay your appliqué fabric right side down. Position the Bondaweb glue-side down onto the fabric (wrong side) and press with an iron to fuse it (following the instructions on the Bondaweb for fusing)
Once fused carefully cut out each letter.
Attach the letters
Carefully peel the backing paper off the letters. Arrange them on the front of your sweatshirt using your centre front marking to help keep everything straight.
Once you are happy with the layout, press them in place to bond them to the fabric (following the instructions on the Bondaweb).
Your letters are now attached to the sweatshirt and ready to appliqué.
Appliqué the letters
On your sewing machine stitch around each letter. I stitched at 1/8inch from the edge and increased my stitch length from 2.5 to 3.
Continue until all of the letters have been sewn in place.
Finish your jumper
And that's it, your festive jumper is ready to wear!