I wanted to add some personality to my plain gray Under Armour sweatshirt. So I began sketching my favorite character Spiderman to visualize placement and pose. I wanted him to be web-swinging off of the logo in the center of the sweatshirt. Shown right is my final conceptual sketch before moving forward with the embroidery process.
Once the design concept was finalized, I took my sweatshirt to the EXP makerspace and began transfering idea to garment. The process involved finding a high quality image of spiderman swinging with no background, importing this to the software, choosing thread patterns and colors that improve efficiency and most clearly resemble my design (simple blue, red, white color blocking), and then positioning my sweatshirt so that the edge of the web comes in contact with the Under Armour logo. This process took roughly 1-2 hours to complete.
Overall I'm very happy with the final design! The stitching is secure on the material, the positioning of the web worked out well, and the resemblance of Spiderman is clear. After showing my friends my design, I got several requests for making custom embroidered sweatshirts for them or as a gift to someone else. Future work with this project could be adding additional embroidered components to the sleeves such as a web shooting out of the wrist area or a quote from the Amazing Spiderman movies.Â