CrisscrossSho!odie

I really enjoy the contests on the Pattern Review Website - I like that it give me an incentive to sew, and also a push to sew better (sometimes I get  bit lazy with finishes etc - this reminds me to think about things like that) and to try new things.

Anyway I checked the contests a couple of weeks ago and saw  that there was a "Warm and Cosy" contest coming up.  This sounded like something right up my alley - I'm always up for warm and cosy - especially at this time of year. I read through the first post with all the rules etc and the contest manager had added a list of possible patterns that people had come up with and one of them was this pattern - the CrisscrossSHO!odie.  It's from a German pattern company SHO! and something about it really appealed to me.

After a bit of deliberating I decided to go ahead and buy the pattern.  Then I had to wait till the contest started on Oct 1st to start making it.

My original plan was to use a piece of sweater knit fabric I had in stash that is light blue with one side with flowers and grey on the back side - I thought I could make it reversible and that would be really cool, but when I went to lay out the pattern I had no where near enough fabric - that hood is a real fabric hog.  I contemplated contrasting sleeves, but couldn't find a fabric to match so went through the stash again to see what else I could come up with.  I found a piece of teal coloured french terry.   I must have bought a lot of it as I'd already used this fabric to make my Jasper dress, but there was almost enough fabric so I decided to go for it.  

This fabric has very little in the way of stretch, and since I was limited on fabric I decided to use a contrasting black ribbing for the cuffs and the bottom band. 

Now I needed to prep my pattern.  Based on the measurements given with the pattern and comparison with my basic sloper -  I cut the front of my pattern at a size 10 around the hood, shoulders and arm hole, extending the arm hole out to the size 16, then graded front the 16 out to an 18 at the waist/hips.  I had read that it was pretty cropped so I cut the length to the size 16.

For the back pattern piece I did something similar, a 10 arm hole extending out to a 16 under the arm and then grading from 16 to 18 along the side seams.  For the back shoulder I placed my basic sloper over the pattern and found that I really needed to change the shoulder angle and drew in the new shoulder line between the armhole and the neckline - the new shoulder line ended at the size 4 neckline so I followed that around the neck.  Again I cut the length to the size 16.

For the sleeves I cut the curve of the sleeve head to the size 10 extending it out to the size 16 and then used the width of the size 16 all the way down.  I wasn't sure how long I'd need the sleeves so just cut the pattern to the maximum length.

I laid my finished pattern pieces on my fabric but unfortunately my sleeve pattern was just slightly too big.   I decided to go ahead and just cut the sleeve out to the maximum length I could and then see from there.  It ended up about 2.5" shorter than the shortest length.  I held the sleeve up against my arm and decided that really it was probably long enough - I'd just add an extra wide cuff.

I cut the cuff 7.5" wide so that when it was turned in half and stitched in place it was 3.5" wide.  In the end the sleeve ended up a perfect length - It really does pay to be short sometimes.

I cut the waistband out to the size 18 as shown, but once I basted the whole thing together I just didn't love it.  The waistband was too narrow compared to my cuffs - and the whole hoodie was too long.  I cut 3" off the length of the hoodie (and in the process took the side seams back to a straight size 16), recut the waist band 6.5"wide so that the finished width was 3" and I was much happier.

With the black cuffs and waistband I thought about how I could go about lining the hood in black as well to make it all tie in - That would have meant almost fully lining the front piece so after a bit of thought I decided I may as well just line the entire thing in black and then I could make it reversible as well.  Unfortunately none of my piece of black fabric were big enough to line the entire thing so I ended up using a thin rayon knit for the front and back pieces and a slightly heavier (but still quite light) weight French terry for the sleeves.  So now I have three different shades of black on the inside - I'm not sure just how reversible it is any more, but at least it's definitely warm and cosy.

The final piece to the puzzle was pockets.  The basic pattern does not have pockets, but the instruction booklet has a section at the back with all sorts of variations on the pattern.  It included variations such as sleeveless, cardigan/Jacket, french seamed hood, enlarged waistband, pockets. 

Whilst most of these are quite useful, the pocket instructions are not very expansive. As taken straight from the instruction booklet. 

1. Draw a pattern piece for your seam pockets with preferred size. The blue line shows the side seam of the bodice (back or front)

OK - that's not really all that helpful. So that was a bust, back to the drawing board.  Whilst I could draft a side seam pocket like they suggested I wasn't sure how comfortable that would be - the side seams are pretty far back, it's not always comfortable to put your hand into side seam pockets.

And then a picture turned up in my Facebook feed.  It was the Hemlock Hoodie from Button and Bibs - it has these cool half moon pockets edged in ribbing - I thought they looked really cool and decided that I would try and give them a go.  I thought about trying to do reversible pockets so they could be accessed from both sides, but once I knew I was going to have to use two different fabrics inside I decided against it - So I just added them to the teal side.  

I think I made the cut out just a little bit too big, but otherwise I really like the way these turned out.

The only real issues is that the bottom front of this jumper is now really quite thick. There are 10 layers of fabric in that bottom seam where the pocket bags are secured....

When I went to put the whole thing together I sewed the two layers together around the front edge. To finish the sleeves I sewed both edges of the cuff to the teal fabric, then turned the black lining fabric under and top stitched it in place at the edge of the cuff.

At the bottom of the jacket I basted together all the layers of the front sections main teal fabric, two layers of pocket  - one teal one black and black lining and then overlapped the two sections.  I found if I took the lower corner right to the side seam as specified by the pattern there was quite a bit of pulling around the pockets so I moved the edges in by about 1" - 1.5"on either side. I then sewed one edge of the band around the bottom, turned up the bottom edge then folded the cuff in half and top stitched it in place for a neat finish inside.

Overall I'm quite happy with this jumper, its definitely warm and cosy, it's comfortable and yet slightly different to my usual style.  A great addition to my wardrobe.