I made these hoodies for the little madam for Christmas but its taken me a while to put them up here. The grey one is a beautiful merino fleece from the Fabric Store that was very easy to work with and also washes and wears fantastically. No fading, pilling or stretching. I used some gorgeous Missoni knit to line the hood of this one. The Missoni knit is from Tessutis and I made her a small dress using it that she has long since outgrown but that she really loved. So I cut it up for the hood and also covered a small cushion with it. I used a Burdakids pattern 9482. Its a great pattern, simple and straight forward. The only change I made was to omit the cord around the hood. The hood is not that big and sits on her head really well without any tightening needed. The cord is a nice finishing touch and if I make this hoodie again I will make the hood a little larger and do the cord tightening thing.
This pattern has a great size range from a kids size 4 right up to a 14. I made the size 14 for her and it fits me as well so its equivalent to a Aus ladies size 8-10.
Yep, she’s pretty happy with her hoodie. Yaaaay!
The other one is a lovely striped linen knit also from the Fabric Store that I thought would be a great light weight summer top, great in theory but this fabric stretched really badly. To look at the two tops together you wouldn’t think they were the same size. I washed both fabrics in the washing machine before sewing them up to avoid any shrinkage but it would have been good to have a bit of shrinkage with the linen. Ive put it in the dryer a couple of times and that shrinks it back a bit but as soon as she wears it for a while it stretches out again. I am going to shorten the sleeves and take it in a bit.
Photobombed by a munchkin in pink pajama’s.
This fabric was also a pain to cut out because it was so twisted. I had to cut each piece out separately and count the stripes at each seam to make sure they would match up to another seam but also to make sure I had the same amount of fabric at each seam. When I was pinning it I had to make sure to carefully match up each stripe and ease them together because it had differing amounts of ‘bulk’, I don’t think I’ve explained that very well but you can see in this photo.
Normally the front and back would be cut on a fold but it was impossible to do that with this fabric because it just would not lay the same. So I pinned the pattern piece on, cut around it except for the centre fold, then pinned a line down the centre fold and flipped the pattern over the centre fold to cut out the other side. I was very careful as I pinned the second side to count each stripe along each edge so that both sides were the same easing or stretching out as I went.
Although this fabric was a pain for me and this pattern, the little madam loves wearing it and will love wearing it more when I finally shorten the sleeves. I think it would be better suited to a more free flowing style of garment.
Materials
Pure wool merino jersey and linen knit from the fabric store, Missoni knit from Tessuti, cotton.
elizathreads 