Transform Your Old Sweater With a Little Bit of Embroidery

6 Materials
$10
2 Hours
Easy

Roses and other patches are very in this season! You can see this style in-store or on the runway. I took an old sweater and made it fashionable again by adding some beautiful rose and pearl embroidery. The added detail really brought this sweater back to life!



Tools and materials:

  • Old sweater
  • Fusible fleece
  • Flower patches
  • Pearl beads
  • Needle and thread
  • Fabric glue
Floral embroidered sweater

Add fusible fleece

The patches I was working with were a little too soft, so to start off, I added some fusible fleece to the back of the patches. I cut the fleece to fit the roses making sure no fleece was sticking out. 

Press on the fleece


I then gently pressed the fusible fleece to activate the glue. 

How to embroider a sweater

Add the patches 

After I had added the fleece to all of my rose patches, I started playing around with their placement on my sweater. In the end, I decided to place them at the top along the shoulder seams. 

Embroidered cardigan sweater


Using my measuring tape, I measured to make sure that my patches were at an equal distance from the shoulder seams. 

Embellished sweater


To prevent the patches from shifting, I used a little bit of fabric glue to stick them down. 

Women’s embroidered sweater


I gave the glue a few minutes to set and then I started hand sewing the patches on. I made sure to use matching thread for the different parts of the patches so that the sweater would look perfect and professional. 

Embroidered sweater with pearls

Add the pearls 

To give the sweater a little bit more interest, I hand sewed some pearls that I had from an old necklace. You can skip this step if you prefer just having patches on your piece. 

Sweater with pearls


This super quick and easy upcycle has made this sweater one of my most worn pieces! How would you place the roses and pearl embroidery? Let me know in the comments below? 

Suggested materials:
  • Old sweater
  • Fusible fleece
  • Flower patches
See all materials

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Comments
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2 of 14 comments
  • Liz Weiss Liz Weiss on Sep 27, 2021

    Beautiful 😍

  • San20286883 San20286883 on Oct 10, 2021

    I love what you did with the sweater. It could be used to really accentuate something that’s kind of old without spending a lot of money money. Thank you for sharing!

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