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I wanted something a little more sporty and modern than the classic sweater so I grabbed this super soft crew neck sweatshirt from Target. I began by sketching the ghost, taking inspiration from photos and a sheet I tossed on my mannequin. Once I was happy with the look of him, I redrew him to scale on printer paper.
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Because of the lightness of the fabric, I added some medium-weight fusible interfacing on the inside of the sweatshirt. I flipped the sweatshirt inside out, inserted an ironing pad inside and ironed the fabric smooth. To place it in the right position, I laid the drawing in place and cut out a piece of interfacing that was slightly larger than the drawing. Because of the position of the ironing pad, I knew where to put the interfacing.
![](/siteassets/inspire/inspire/projects/holiday/spooky-couched-yarn-ghost-sweatshirt/image3.png)
After ironing the interfacing onto the sweatshirt, I flipped it right side out, ironed it once more and marked the edges of the interfacing with my heat-erasable pen. This prevented me from placing the design outside of its borders. I laid the drawing in position and with the same pen, I poked holes through the paper and marked the important lines of the drawing.
![](/siteassets/inspire/inspire/projects/holiday/spooky-couched-yarn-ghost-sweatshirt/image4.png)
Once the design was thoroughly marked, I removed the paper and connected the marks to form the full design. I set up my machine by attaching the Beading Foot, threading the spool and bobbin with white thread and setting the stitch to middle zig zag. I also pulled up the bobbin thread. You want to make the zig zags only a little bit wider than your yarn so the stitching doesn't show.
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After the machine was ready and the sweatshirt was in position under the foot, I pulled the yarn under the foot. I secured the yarn with a few backstitches and then it was just a matter of following the drawn lines while keeping the thread fed through. At this point I had decided to try and add the yarn in as few segments as possible and to fill in the openings of the “sleeves” with continuous lines.
![](/siteassets/inspire/inspire/projects/holiday/spooky-couched-yarn-ghost-sweatshirt/image6.png)
The trickiest part of sewing the thread down was turning tight corners as the yarn wanted to pop out from the foot channel. I solved this by raising the foot, rotating everything together, lowering the foot and then continuing on. This got faster as I progressed through the design. This whole ghost took me about 1.5hrs to complete. The eyes were done with pre cut small lengths of yarn and I layered the ends on top to make them extra secure.
![](/siteassets/inspire/inspire/projects/holiday/spooky-couched-yarn-ghost-sweatshirt/image7.png)
In the end, I did add a few shorter pieces into the mix to make everything more legible. I loved how this technique allowed for so many spontaneous design decisions. The end result is graphic but textured in a really unique way. I will definitely be using this in the future for gifts and adding a little visual interest to old favorites.
![](/siteassets/inspire/inspire/projects/holiday/spooky-couched-yarn-ghost-sweatshirt/image8.png)
Thanks for following along!