A Magic Hoodie

Remember January 2023? No? Back then I set a word for the year which was “magic” . One of my goals to make the word magic come to life was to create a magic sweater. I can announce that in January 2024 I made that magic hoodie while being in quarantine with Covid. Only 12 months after listing that goal. Yeah me. And now another six month later I actually wore said magic hoodie for the first time. Double yeah me. And since I haven’t shared many creative projects on this blog lately I decided to share a bit about this project.

I started my research on what to do and how my magic sweater was supposed to look like early I January 2023. For that Pinterest is my best friend. I always start by gathering a mood board and sooner or later I can see a theme, things that resonate. I rather quickly knew I wanted to do something with moons.

Moons are just witchy and magical and mysterious. Don’t you agree? I found this image and knew that’s what it’s going to. Next up I needed to decide what kind of technique I wanted to use to get the lunar phases onto my sweater.

I have always admired people who are good in embroidery. I am not one of them. I think in my very early childhood days my grandma taught me how to cross stitch but I never gotten the hang of it. But for this project my vision was an embroidered sparkling moon. I checked out all the different embroidery stitches and soon knew that the satin stitch is what I wanted. Luckily I have a blog friend Clare who is an embroidery wizard. She is teaching embroidery and creating fun kits and patterns and even has published two books. Her first book was sitting on my shelf but I had never thoroughly read through it. So I did that. And was overwhelmed. So I chatted with Clare over Instagram and told her what I was planning. She advised me on the best threads to use and how to go at it. So I ordered those threads and watched a couple more youtube videos.

The yarn arrived. And now I needed to separate the threads. This took a while. I had those strings all taped up in my room ready to start. And then we needed to move… So it all went into a box to not see daylight until January 2024.

With a new year and new momentum and the hoodie sitting here for an entire year I started.

Now, if you are looking for a best practice post, this is not it. I barely knew what I was doing. As Clare advised me I took three threads. I added a plain black one, a shiny black one and black/silver metallic one together to get the sparkling effect I had in my mind. Clare also mentioned that for satin stitches on bigger motifs I should not go all the length but half way and then the rest. That made sense but it took some time to get the hang of it.

The stitching itself did take quite some time. I also had to undo a couple of times because everything got tangled. I did struggle with the tension of the threads. It wasn’t supposed to be too much in order to not be wavy. But also not too loose as the threads would come undone. This didn’t really work well. I probably should have used three stitches for the full moon. I didn’t. In the end I made knots at the back in order to fix my stitching a bit.

After wearing it a couple of days a few threads are already pulled. It’s currently in the laundry so I am not sure yet how bad it looks.

Anyways, this was still a very good project over all. Why?

• I tried a new technique
• I was having a great creative vision and I achieved what I was going for.
• I got to chat with Clare about something she is so good at and I learned a lot.
• I was fearless in attempting this project.
• I love the finished hoodie and it is so comfortable.

It is the third sweater/pullover I made for a word of the year.

My magic hoodie with embroidered lunar phases.

Have you ever embroidered something? Would you start such a time heavy project? Which of the sweaters is your favorite?