Hoodie Pattern Review - Burdastyle 103 January 2017

After the issues I had with the zero waste hoodie I made a few weeks ago. I decided to follow a pattern and make a looser fit top. I had my eye on this one from Burdastyle Magazine. It's in the Janurary 2017 issue. I liked the style lines and the shape of the hood.

I bought this cozy petrol coloured sweatshirt fabric from 1st For Fabrics during lockdown and have only just got around to sewing it up.

The pattern is drafted very well and came together very quickly. The fabric behaved well and is cozy without being too thick. I wondered if my machine would be able to cope with the multiple layers of fabric at the front of the hood, but it was fine and I had no issues at all.

I sewed this on my Pfaff select 3.2 with a Smetchz stretch needle. The seams were sewn with a narrow zigzag length 2 and width 1; they were neatened with my overlocker. I omitted the eyelets and instead made a buttonhole opening for the hood cord, which I had reclaimed from an old hoodie.

I made a size 38, which is my usual Burdastyle size, but could have easily sized down as this pattern is very roomy and this hoodie is definitely loose fit, but hey! Who doesn't love a baggy hoodie. 

I'm looking forward to wearing this as a cover-up on cooler summer evenings and early mornings or while I'm warming up during workouts or skate sessions. It will certainly replace my old hoodie - which has 3rd hand (at least), stained and has now been relegated to the gardening/ decorating pile.

Photos taken by my daughter on our dog walk. It was a bit blowy!!!!

Making it Work

I don't know about you, but I sometimes have moments where I wonder if I actually know anything about fabric and sewing. I have those projects that should just work and for some unkown reason just don't. Do you know what I mean?

This project was one of those. All the elements for a successful make were there: stretch cotton, tried and true pattern, all the right notions and haberdashery but somehow - It. Went. Wrong. and I'm still trying to work out what I did that caused the error.

Recently I'd been working on a make for Minerva and had bought some black stretch cotton from 1st For Fabrics to line the top I was making and make an accompanying black skirt. I had enough left over for a cropped pair of trousers.

This cotton is super stretchy - it has a slight sheen and a smooth even surface, it does crease quite a lot, but as it's a stretch garment that isn't too much of an issue. The recovery is good too.

I settled with the Closet Case Ginger Jeans pattern as the base for these trousers - constructing them without all the top stitching as I was making trousers. I also omitted the back pockets. I made the same size that I had done the last time I made Jeans (less stretchy fabric) and made my usual adjustments. I even basted them and tried them on - all seemed well. However, once I had put the waist band on I tried them again and realised they were way too tight. I wouldn't have been able to sit in them.

Cross with myself I threw them in the corner, thinking that they might fit my daughter, if I could be bothered to finish them - she wasn't intreested. I left them there for several days until they were ready to say sorry and I took another hard look at them, determined to make it work. I hadn't trimmed the waistband so that could be taken off and I'd left the full seam allowance on the inseam and outseam. 

I unpicked the waistband from the front to just past the side seams to allow me to adjust them. Then I let out the inseam and outseam by 0.5cm - not much at all, but enough to make a whole world of difference to the fit. Before sewing a second line of stitching to secure the seams, I thought I had better try them on - Hooray, success! I thought to myself as I pulled the zip up and straight off the end of the zipper! DOH! I had forgotted I'd trimmed the zipper tape.

Off I went to my local fabric shop to buy another zip as I didn't have another at home and then proceeded to complete the fiddly task of applying a zip after finishing the fly!

With the buttonhole finally made and a button from my stash and the hems completed, these were finished. I wore them to work last week and got lots of compliments  - they are very slimming! I'm not sure how much wear I'll get out of them before it becomes too cold, but I'm sure these will be a great addition to my summer work wardrobe.