Alison Barnett

This Beep Beep Sweatshirt (designed by Made by Jack’s Mum, from One Thimble issue 19) was upcycled from a plain french terry women’s sweater. The tricky thing was, I had previously used the same sweater to make a Doris Skirt (Misusu Patterns) so had only patchy remnants: most of the front – a nice solid area to work with, then a few odd shaped pieces. The centre back seam of the original sweater, further reducing the solid areas of fabric, didn’t help either.

Thankfully, I was making a small size 3 so I was able to cut most pieces out of the small fabric off cuts I had. However, I had to make one change- I cut the side panels of the Beep Beep Sweatshirt as two strips, rather than one long continuous piece, adding a seam in line with the sleeve seam.

Before sewing the Beep Beep sweatshirt together, I designed a confetti pattern in Photoshop and used my Brother ScanNCut to make a freezer paper stencil. I then used fabric paint to decorate the shoulders/tops of the sleeves and the pockets. For the side panels, I used a pattern from my graphic collection and again used my ScanNCut to make a freezer paper stencil, and fabric paint to decorate the side panels. This worked well as it covered up the added seam line. Progress shots can be seen here: https://www.facebook.com/littleseren/posts/794411667417175

On the front of the sweatshirt is a monoline alphabet design by Julvelyn of JS Art & Design, also from One Thimble 19, sewn using free motion embroidery on my sewing machine. A video of that process can be seen here on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/littleseren/videos/795781180613557/. This was also sewn prior to assembly.

The sweatshirt was finished by adding new Euro ribbing to the neckline and hems.