DIY gold polka dot sweatshirt tutorial

Polka dots are everywhere these days, and I especially love the jumbo dot varieties. Adding polka dots to a shirt is a snap using fabric paint and a simple homemade stencil, and you can make your new top even trendier with some colorblocking along the hem and ends of the sleeves. This sweatshirt was one of those easy craft projects that worked out perfectly from start to finish (unlike other projects I’ve done lately).

I’d actually planned to sew a large portion of my daughter’s wardrobe for winter (like the refashioned wardrobe I made for her last spring). But I while I was in the middle of Halloween sewing I got on Target’s website and saw the deals and realized it would be SOOOO much simpler to just buy her clothes instead…and {true confessions of a sewing blogger}: we got a package on our doorstep a week later.

But I did make this sweatshirt for her. I cut the pieces from a $1 thrifted sweater, using the same shirt I chopped up to make my princess dress pattern:

Once I had the pieces cut up, I added gold polka dots to the front. I cut a 1.5 inch circle out of a piece of cardstock, then trimmed around it to make a 3 inch square with the circle in the direct center. This made a stencil, much like the tiny heart stencil I used on a pair of my daughter’s jeans. A stencil like this makes it really easy to figure out where the dots should go – simply start with one in the center, then move the stencil so a corner barely touches the dot you’ve already made. This way you don’t have to measure (or guess) how much space to leave between dots.

I used acrylic craft paint (Folk Art metallic incan gold) mixed with textile medium (you can find here on Amazon) and dabbed it on with a cheap foam brush. Once dry it feels a little stiff, but when you run it through the wash it softens right up, thanks to the textile medium. I only put dots on the front, so I wanted another gold detail, so I painted a strip of gold at the end of each sleeve and across the bottom hem on the front and back of a shirt (just use tape to get a nice straight edge).

Then I sewed the sweatshirt up like normal and my daughter loves it. And I’m almost wishing I’d made the sweatshirt in my size instead of hers.

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