Jan 3, 2023

How to sew: sweatshirt with professional techniques

Hello Darlings,

One thing I love about sewing is that one garment can be assembled different ways: you may use quick and efficient techniques, or you may use more difficult and professional looking techniques - the choice is yours!

I personally use both approaches, often depending on mood/time/project/etc. But whenever I put extra effort into using more advanced sewing techniques, I'm always happier with end result in the long run.

In todays tutorial, we will be making sweatshirt and I'll show you a several techniques that will create professional looking results. A few months back, I shared a tutorial how to sew sweatshirt in a simplified way, and today you will see how just a few simple touches will elevate same design to the next quality level!

Before starting the tutorial, I want to introduce partners of this tutorial - needle industry experts Organ Needles.

Organ Needles are one of the leading brands in needle industry, with over 100 years of expertise in needle making. Thanks to accumulation of excellent processing technology, Organ Needles create beautiful and accurate stitches and wide product range allows to find perfect fitting needle for any project you are working on, whether it's embroidery, serging or sewing difficult materials like leather. I've personally been sewing with Organ Needles for several years already and I use these needles in all of my machines: industrial straight stitch, domestic sewing machine, embroidery machine and serger. When I'm sewing with Organ Needles, I'm confident that I'll get perfect stitch quality and needles will perform flawlessly. It's easy to recommend them, because they are reliable and get job done, no matter what project you have on hands.

Now let's start our tutorial! Click below to watch full tutorial and scroll below for technique breakdown and final garment looks.

Pattern options

To make this sweatshirt, you have a few pattern options:

Use a ready-made pattern (I'm using my 'Marie' dress pattern, which you can find here);
Create pattern from scratch, using one of my tutorials (simple pattern drawing here or full detailed instructions here).

Sewing techniques

In this tutorial, I share several techniques for sweatshirt making - you may include them all into your garment, you may include just one or two. Either way, you will be getting fabulous results! Here are the techniques that you will find in this tutorial (click each link to jump straight to this technique in the video!):

Neckline finish with twill tape (click here to watch this technique). This neckline finish with make sweatshirt more comfy to wear, last longer and look neater - win, win, win! One of my favourite techniques when it comes to sweatshirt or t-shirt making.

Embroidery using spray adhesive (click here to watch this technique). I love adding embroidery details to my garments - it adds a nice, unique touch to the design. However, when doing embroidery with stretch fabrics, it might be a bit of a challenge to achieve nice looking results - but that issue is solved when using spray adhesives! Spray adhesives temporarily lock backing with fabric, making fabric not stretchy and embroidery process much easier and neater. To do embroidery with spray adhesives, you need to use special needle - I use Organ Needles Anti-Glue needles that are finished with special coating, which prevents glue from sticking. These needles work great with different embroidery threads and ensure smooth embroidery process.

Embroidery with spray adhesives and Organ Needles Anti-Glue needle

Elastic hem (click here to watch this technique). This is my hand-down favourite hem finish on knit garments: very clean, professional look, while maintaining elasticity - does it get any better than this? For this finish, I use Organ Needles Stretch twin needle. Just as regular needles, these needles come in different sizes, so choose which one is best for your project; also, pay attention to distances between the needles - Organ Needles Twin needles come in several different distances and for hemming you can pick whichever is more beautiful for you (I personally like 4mm distance for hems the best).

Elastic hem (inside and outside), finished using Organ Needles Twin stretch needle

Sleeve top curve finish (click here to watch this technique). One thing that might be quite annoying is serger seams rolling over and not staying in place. To prevent that, you can secure the top curve of the serger seam to the bodice of the sweatshirt - this way, the seam will stay in place even after washing the garment. To sew knit fabrics, always use suitable needle like Organ Needles Jersey needle - it has a rounded tip, which will allow needle to slip between the threads instead of cutting through them, ensuring better seam quality and preventing fabric from stretching out.

Sleeve seam finish, made using Organ Needles Jersey needles

Side slits (click here to watch this technique). Final technique I added was side slits - I love how they look! I used 2cm seam allowance for these slits, but use whichever seam allowance is more beautiful for you!