Introducing: the Stadium Sweatshirt

After much delay, I’m excited to announce the launch of the Stadium Sweatshirt! Stadium is a vintage inspired sweatshirt in two styles - a pullover and cardigan - that includes instructions for adding felt applique.

This sweatshirt evolved from a quarantine-era art project, where I hand painted motifs on two sporty sweatshirts that represented the phases of nature: growth and decay. You can read more about the initial project and what inspired it here. After sharing some images of the sweatshirts online, it was clear that folks were interested in a pattern and I was excited about turning my pandemic art project into something sewable for others.

After nearly a year of on-and-off development, I settled on the final cut and style that would become the Stadium sweatshirt. I was heavily inspired by vintage letterman cardigans and sports sweatshirts with felt applique. You can see many examples on my pinterest moodboard.

A screenshot of my pinterest board for Stadium, including a range of colorful vintage sweatshirts, letterman sweaters, felt applique, and some odd sweatshirt examples.

There are a lot of sweatshirt patterns out there. What makes this one special, I think, is the vintage vibe. You can of course sew these up without any applique, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s the best part. My pattern testers showcased some excellent applique celebrating things they love, from the underground network of cells that produce mushrooms to Dada artist Jean Arp. I can’t wait to see what sort of applique you create on your stadium sweatshirt!

Morgan feeds adorable goats and retrieves cardboard in their Mycelium Stadium Sweatshirt.

Adrienne shows off the Jean Arp inspired applique on her Stadium cardigan and sweatshirt.

There are even more opportunities for fun customization of this pattern! I’ll be sharing a few pattern hacks in the coming weeks, but here are two fun and straightforward hacks from my testers. Zoe (left) played with color blocking using the same fabric for the button band, cuffs, neckline, and hem. Sam (right) modified the pattern to have a v-neck and played with color/print blocking using multiple coordinating fabrics.

I’m super excited to finally get this pattern out in the world and I can’t wait to see your version! You can purchase the PDF pattern here.