An isolation birthday shirt

I haven't been doing a lot of sewing lately.  A lot of it has to do with not having a dedicated sewing space that is set up all the time any more, it just makes it that little bit harder to get started.  The other thing is I really don't need any new winter clothes, and it's not warm enough here yet for me to start thinking about summer clothes.  Add in the fact that I don't have many winter fabrics in stash and I'm just stagnating.

However the other day I was trying to clean up some of my fabric storage and realised that what I want is some sort of project that really gets me thinking and I came up with the idea of making a winter top out of all my left over scrap fabrics.  Double whammy it gets rid of some of those little pieces of fabric I have lying around, plus it also makes a good project.

So the first thing to do was to figure out what fabrics to use.  I pulled out all my winter weight fabric scraps and sorted them into different weights. I found the left overs from my bright green shirt and decided I really wanted to use it and there was a scrap of black sweater fleece left over from my rainbow zipper dress.  I figured that these would work really nicely together.

The green fabric was very limited so I decided to use it as accents only and started sketching different designs.  I settled on a design with a large green triangle on front split into 4 different triangles plus a triangle on each shoulder and each sleeve. 

I traced out my pattern.  I went with the same Simplicity 5133 pattern for a basic knit shirt.  I sketched in my triangles on the front and sleeve pieces, modifying the shoulder pieces slightly to make sure they fitted on the scraps of fabric I had.

I cut my pattern pieces along the seam lines and cut out each of my green pieces.  I then figured that I had enough scraps left over to just get two small triangles on the back so traced out the back pattern piece and added a triangle at the center top and another at the center bottom.

I was pretty much down to just scraps of green by now so I moved onto my black.

I took the remaining pieces of pattern and went to lay them on my black fabric only to find out that I didn't have enough.......what now.  Another peruse of my stash and I found a scrap of fabric way down the back that is double faced knit, black on one side and grey on the other.  I originally used it to make this reversible shirt.  I held it up against my other black and it was close enough so I decided to use that as well.  I ended up cutting my front and sleeves from my rainbow zipper dress black and the back, neckband, cuffs and bottom band out of the reversible black.

Now to hope that they don't fade/shrink at different rates.  These photos were taken after a couple of washes and it all seems good so far!

Because I don't have my serger set up upstairs I just totally skipped doing any seam finishing on the shirt.  All seams are just left as is.  I think this is the first time I've done this in quite some time.

The shirt was easy to sew together, all my points lined up nicely and there were no surprises.  I put this together in a day.  It just so happened to be the day before my birthday, so I was able to wear it for the first time on my birthday so it has now been dubbed my isolation birthday shirt.  It was nice to have something new and pretty to wear on my birthday.

So anyway I really love the way this shirt turned out and will be wearing it lots till it gets too hot.

Going out shirt - Hedgehogs

The last time I went to the fabric store (before this whole self isolation thing began) I had to take my kids with me so I bribed them by offering them each a piece of fabric of their choosing. 

Both kids have grown out of their going out clothes again - we really only wear them a couple of times a year so they don't get much wear before I have to replace them, so I figured that they could each choose a piece of fabric and I would make them a button up shirt.

My daughter chose this cotton with yellow polkadots all over it interspersed with rolled up hedgehogs (she's had a thing for Sonic the hedgehog for over a year now so anything hedgehog related is a big yes). 

To make this into a shirt I pulled out an old New Look Pattern 6598.  This must have been the first pattern I ever bought for myself after moving out of home.  I remember that I didn't have a sewing machine so I sewed it entirely be hand - even the button holes!

I measured my daughter and according to the back of the envelope she was a 12 bust, 16 waist and 14 hips. Based on some quick measurements of the pattern I decided to cut a straight size 12.

L requested the long sleeve version of the shirt, but when I looked at it closely this pattern has no cuffs on the long sleeve.  I wasn't sure how that would work - you couldn't roll them up at all and that would be so annoying, so I cut about 2" off the length of the sleeve and added the cuff and placket from my basic woven long sleeve top.

The sleeves are a tad too long, but I prefer that over too short, and so does L.

We also left off the tie at the back - I cut it out and was planning on putting it in, but then I went ahead and sewed the darts without them and she said she didn't want them anyway so we left them off.

There are definitely a few fitting issues here - I should definitely have graded out to at least a 14 or 16 at the hips.

I found the instructions included in this pattern very hard to follow, especially around the collar region, if I didn't know basically how it should go together I'm not sure I would have been able to figure it out to tell the truth.  But I managed to muddle through.  I quite like the way the collar sits but I did top stitch down the back facing to get it to sit nicely.

I chose not to finish the edge of the facing as I didn't want those edges getting too bulky.  Instead I just ran a line of straight stitched about 1/8"away from the edge and am relying on the iron on interfacing to minimise the fraying.

I did however go all out on the hem choosing to mitre my corners at the side split.  I also did french seams on all internal seams.

The only other issue occurred when I was putting in the snaps.  She decided that she would prefer snaps rather than buttons (just like her mother) but I realised that I only had just enough white snaps to do 6 down the front and one on each sleeve.  As I installed the very last snap I realised that rather than a male and a female the last snap was two males - there were no other options so I just left it, but I'll have to go back and change it when I get around to buying more snaps - not sure when that will be at the moment.

This shirt will probably never have a chance to be worn outside the house before she grows out of it  - It turned out quite a bit more fitted than I had originally planned - but oh well!

Leftover camouflage Shirt for me.

 After my sons camouflage jumper was made I still had just enough fabric for a basic shirt.  I find that even before the shut in I was reaching for my green sweater shirt a lot.  It's a great bright colour, really basic and simple to wear, comfortable, what more could you want - one for everyday of the week -  that's what - so I decided I would use the remainder of the fleece  to make myself a shirt.

This time I added 1"to the length of the shirt - just at the bottom - I don't think I needed quite that much so I think I'll do 1/2" next time.

I stupidly cut the bottom band on the grain so it had no stretch so I had to use the last little dregs of my fabric to piece together a back band and just used the non stretch band in the front.  The only other change I made was to shorten the neckband by about 1/2" and deepen the V to make the neckband sit a bit more flush as I find the green one is not that great.

This one sits beautifully against my chest.

This could have been a really quick sew but as my serger was downstairs I decided to faux faux flat fell each seam which takes ages.  Basically you sew the seam, trim down one side, sew the other side flat over the trimmed edge and then trim the last seam right along the last line of stitching, so 4 steps for each seam.

The good news is I love it - have worn it numerous times already.

Camouflage Jumper for my Son

My second sewing project during the Covid shutdown was a camoflague fleece jumper for my son.  I bought this fleece fabric a while ago and promised to make his a sweater out of it so I figured that this was a good time.

For a pattern I started with the Paprika Patterns Jasper sweater.  I've made this a number of time for myself so I started with my copy of the pattern which is basically a size 7 with a few modifications.

I traced the pattern onto tracing paper and then started making a few more modifications to make it something that would be good for a 10yo boy.

The first mod was to remove the bust shaping.  I didn't do anything special here, basically just  removed the curvature from the side pattern piece at the front and some extra length at the front and side. I then raised the front neckline to remove the big V.

The big modifications came with the outer hood piece.  I had to account for the raising of the front neckline, but also take out some of the extra ease that was built into this piece and remove all the asymmetry.   The remaining opening is just the right size, not to big and not too small.

I fully lined the hood with some scraps of camoflauge waffle knit (this boy likes his camo so we have plenty of different ones in stash) I also used this for the back of the pocket bag.

 In the end I'm really happy with how this turned out and best of all so is he.  It's oversized which is just how he likes it.

Valhalla Dress

With all that is going on lately I haven't been doing a lot of sewing.   My normal sewing space is down in the basement, I have it set up with my sewing machine, my serger, my ironing board etc.  Unfortunately the other half of the room is my husbands computer room.  With him working from home now I don't feel comfortable working down there during the day so I moved my main sewing machine up to the dining room table.  Unfortunately I can't leave it set up there as people keep needing that space for other things - craft projects, science experiments, baking, board games - you know the tools of a corona virus lockdown (well they are here anyway).  Every now and then I've taken a day and spread myself out and done some sewing, but most days the machine is left on a chair in a corner.

But that's ok.  It's not that I'm not creating - nope I couldn't do that - I've just been focusing on my knitting instead.  I had some beautiful wool in 4 different colourways and I wanted to knit a sweater out of it.  I'd made about half of the bodice in one stitch when I realised that there was no way I was going to be able to finish it with the amount of yarn I had - and I had no way of getting more yarn - so I ripped it out and started again.  I sketched out a new design and then realised that it was going to require me to work with something like 15 bobbins of yarn, yikes - but hey it's keeping me busy.

But back to sewing - Most of the small amount of sewing that I've done so far has been for the kids. 

My daughter has created herself an alter ego. She's written numerous stories about her, sketched and drawn her and at all times this character - Valhalla is her name - is always wearing the same outfit.  A red dress, black knee high boots and a cropped black leather jacket.

On occasions she has also tried dressing up as her - using my black knee high boots which fit her perfectly, my black leather jacket - which fits her a lot better than it fits me these days - and my red dress which doesn't fir her at all.....

So a while ago we decided that we would have to make L her very own Valhalla dress.  We went shopping and found some fabric in the right colour and weight - a solid red in a light weight scuba fabric. Then we needed a pattern.  After consulting with L we  made a pattern out of her standard T- shirt pattern, cropped off at the waist, with a half circle skirt added onto the bottom.  One day, when she had to come with me to one of my sewing lessons, she started cutting out her dress, but then it got forgotten about and has been sitting in the sewing room ever since.  I decided that I should probably finish it off.

Since she had already cut it all out (though I did have to recut the neckband as she had not cut it on the stretch) and basted it all together, it was just a matter of going back and neatening up some seams  and serging it, plus adding the neckband.

I did add pockets to the side seams too which I had originally left out of the pattern as I didn't want to make it too difficult for her.

I didn't bother with hems on the sleeves or the bottom as this fabric really doesn't need it (and it ended up shorter than I expected to I didn't want to remove any length).

But of course it needs the knee high black boots and black leather jacket!

So here is one of her sketches of Valhalla as a hedgehog.

And now Valhalla the person!

Cashmerette Harrison Shirt

At the end of last year I attended the Cashmerette Holiday Tea party in Boston.  It was so much fun meeting up with real life sewists....the only thing is I felt like a bit of a fraud since I'd never actually sewn a Cashmerette Pattern.  I figured it was about time to change that and I bought one of their patterns whilst I was there.  I decided on the Harrison button up shirt as I had always been intrigued by the double princess seams.

I wanted to start with a wearable muslin and pulled out some plaid flannel from the stash.  Next figuring out what size to use.

Based on my Bust measurement of 42" I should be either 12 G/H cup or a 14 C/D cup.  I know that generally I need to size down on the shoulder region and my bust is very large so I decided to start with the 12 G/H.

My waist measurement is 37"and my hips 43.5" which puts my in between a 16 and 18 for waist and  12-14 for hips.

At this point I looked at the finished garment measurements and based on the amount of ease I wanted I decided to just cut the 12 G/H around the bust grading out to a 14 at waist and hips.

I did however want to use a size 14 for my upper arms so I used most of the armhole cut to size 12 but extended the underarm to the size 14  so I could used the size 14 arm pattern piece.

The main change that I had to make to my pattern pieces was to remove length.  the size 12 has a back length of 26 1/4"but my back length is only 24"so I removed a total of 2" from the pattern length at the shorten lengthen line.

For possibly the first time ever I actually traced out most of my pattern pieces.  Normally I find I'm in the upper ranges for a pattern so it's easy enough to just fold the pattern in to the desired size, but this time I was using the smallest size and it just got too bulky folding the pattern so I went ahead and traced it.

I cut out my fabric trying very hard to get plaids to match at least horizontally (its impossible to match around the top of the princess seams so I just concentrated on matching from the waistline down and across the front.

I then basted the main pieces together to see how it all fitted.  I was happily surprised that it was a pretty good fit.  I did some minor tweaking to the princess seams in the front, but in the end it wasn't enough to justify changing my pattern.

I went ahead and sewed the shirt together, following the instructions.

  The collar was put together sightly differently than I would normally, but came out nicely in the end. I wasn't a big fan of the two piece placket on the sleeve, I prefer a single piece, however it did come together nicely in the end so no issues.  If I were to sew it again I'd probably convert these pattern pieces into a single piece just for my ease.

I'm quite happy with the way that it fits - there is no gaping across the front which is the main issue with button up shirts.

So the only real problem is that I realised once I finished it and tried it on that it's just not really me.  I'm not a button up shirt type of girl.  I've worn it a few times more because I think I should than because I want to.  I'm not sure if I'll bother to use this pattern again or not.  Maybe a more fancy shirt for going out?

So I like the pattern, I like the fit I just don't love the final product.

Pattern Review Sewing Bee Round 3 - Active wear

When they announced that activewear was the third round of the sewing bee I was quite excited.  I had many ideas on what I could do. Since I didn't get around to writing up a review for these I thought I'd just put my submission here:

Ahh exercise – I have a varied history with exercise! My family was not sporty and I never played any sports growing up, however in about 9th grade I got invited to join a local soccer team, the requirements only being they needed girls who lived in my suburb. I played for a couple of years, enjoying the social aspects of the sport and gaining a little fitness but then that team fell apart. It wasn’t until I was at University that I found a new team to play with and I got back into it. I played for 9 years with these friends, cycling through a number of different teams as we moved but just generally having fun and getting fit but then I moved to the US. I was hoping to continue playing but I soon found out that sports in the US are not the same as sports in Australia. I find that there are very limited opportunities for sports to be played just for fun and not for competition - especially for adults. The only real option I had was playing for a competitive team over an hours drive away. Well I really wasn’t up for that – my first child was just a year old and so I ended up quitting soccer.

For a couple of years I did little to no exercise, before realising that I couldn’t continue like that. A friend invited me to run a 5K race with her and I took her up on it and found that, whilst I hate running races, I quite enjoy running by myself, and so I took up running for a couple of years. But then each year it would get cold and I’d stop enjoying running outside so I went looking for another way to exercise.

This time I took up weightlifting – Squats, Bench Press, Deadlifts etc. Again, I found I really enjoyed it for a while, but it was really solitary and I found that I wasn’t pushing myself enough. I wanted to be a part of a team, I need the accountability that other people bring.

Then last September I found a Ninja Warrior Gym had opened up nearby. My son and I really enjoy watching the program together and I thought it would be fun to try it. I was right – it is so much fun and a great workout, I especially love the obstacles where you get to fly through the air, though I’m still working on the landing! But the thing I like the most about it is the camaraderie. Everyone there is cheering you on, You don't have to be the best, you just have to do YOUR best and even the smallest achievements are celebrated.

There is only one problem with my Ninja Warrior class – and that is that it’s only on once a week – and so to supplement my training I’ve taken up running and lifting again. And now I find myself needing activewear that can be used not only for my Ninja Warrior classes, but also for running (including running outside in New England in the winter) and lifting. A tall order, but I think I’ve done it.

Sports Bra
As someone who is large busted the first thing I have to think about when I’m exercising is my bra. It’s a real struggle to find something that is supportive enough for a G/H cup. For weightlifting I can get away with a standard bra, but for higher impact sports like running and Ninja Warrior I find I need to wear two bras. My normal sports bra with a crop top over the top.
And so for my first activewear piece I wanted to make a sports bra that would work as a bra for weightlifting but could also be worn over another bra when I want to go out for a run.
Pattern
The pattern I used for my bra is a self-drafted pattern. It consists of a bridge, two-piece cup, a full coverage back piece and two curved strap pieces wrapping over the shoulders. I’ve tweaked this pattern a number of times to get the fit just right. It’s a balancing act trying to make it supportive enough and yet with enough give to get on and off. There is no closure to this bra.
Fabrics
I used 4 different fabrics in this piece. The main fabric is a teal poly lycra. This fabric is quite thick but has a large amount of stretch in all four directions 60% across the grain and 40% with the grain. In fact it has so much stretch it doesn’t provide that much support, so to combat this problem I underlined all the main pieces of the bra with a power mesh fabric.
I then added a black contrasting fabric. This is also a poly lycra, but it a slightly lighter weight and only has stretch (about 40%) in the cross direction. I used this as the strap fabric, as by cutting the strap so that there is no stretch over the shoulder it provides a little extra support.
The final fabric is a very light weight poly lycra fabric with a very small detailed geometric print in shades of teal, blue, pink and purple. This fabric has about 40% stretch on the cross grain and about 10% stretch lengthwise. I used this fabric to fully line the inside of the bra.
Design Details
I used my sewing machine to construct this bra rather than the serger as I didn't want to add any thickness to my seams. Each seam was sewn with the lightning stitch then finger pressed open and top stitched down the center of the seam with one of my machines decorative stitches that has a lot of stretch. I finally trimmed all loose seam allowances. This gives a very flat seam.
I started by sewing the bra out of the teal and the mesh fabric basted together. I then repeated all the steps with the lining fabric to create a second bra. The next step was to attach the two bras to each other along the top edges of the straps and around the underarm. These seams were sewn using a normal straight stitch so that there is no longer any stretch to those seams - this gives the bra maximum support.
The two layers of the bra were turned right side out and attached together at the shoulders. The two layers were serged together along the bottom edge and a piece of 1.5”wide plush elastic was sewn on with a zig zag stitch and then turned and top stitched using the stretchy decorative stitch.

Conclusion:
I love this bra. It’s super supportive, though I’ll probably still need my normal underwire bra underneath it to run in, but I think this will be fine on it’s own for Ninja warrior, and will definitely be fine for weightlifting. Overall a great piece.

I've worn this a bit now and it is definitely fine to wear by itself for most exercises (I haven't tested a 5k run yet) and is quite comfortable - though hard to get into.

Leggings
Up next in my activewear outfit is my leggings.
As a general rule I prefer to wear ¾ length leggings or shorts, however when winter rolls around I find that I need to wear full length leggings especially when I go out for a run, I’ve also found that I prefer full lenth for Ninja Warrior class (less scraped knees sliding back down the warped wall), and so I wanted to make a pair of full length leggings.
Fabrics
I knew that I wanted to incorporate the two colours from my bra, with the majority of the leggings being made from the teal fabric with the black being used as a contrasting colour, then after pulling out my power mesh to make my bra, I decided it would be fun to incorporate the mesh into the pattern as well.
Pattern Design
Again I used a self drafted pattern for this garment. It is a very basic pattern, just a single pattern piece cut on the fold at the front so there are really just two seams, the inside leg seam and the back seam, plus a gusset. 

I knew that I wanted more detail for this pair of leggings. I knew I wanted pockets and decided if I was going to do pockets I may as well make them big enough to fit my phone. To do this I decided to place a black stripe down the outside of the leggings into which I could incorporate the pocket. I made a quick muslin of my pattern and the using my yard stick marked a line straight down my side which I then transferred to my pattern (as seen above). I then added lines 1.5” away on each side of the side seam line to create a 3” strip down the outside of the pants. I decided to flare the stripe outwards at the top creating a yoke around the back of the leggings and a curve at the front. I placed the pocket at the point where the curves end and the straight strip starts. To make the pocket I cut this side strip in two parts, one extending from the yoke down to about mid thigh and the other starting at the top of the pocket and extending down the length of the leg. I then used the patterned fabric from my bra to create a pocket bag. I sewed the lining to the top of the pocket and then used some clear elastic to reinforce the top of the pocket. A simple zig zag seam attaching the pocket lining to the back of the black stripe completed the pocket.

Once I had the side stripe down I then used some scraps of fabric pinned to my muslin to decide on the placement of the other black and mesh inserts. I ended up spiraling the inserts around my leg in an alternating arrangement (Teal, Black, Mesh) which when transferred to the pattern looked like lots of diagonal stripes.
I used tracing paper to make pattern pieces for each of the different coloured stripes and for the remaining legging pieces, adding ¼” seam allowance at every cut line.
When I went to baste it all together, I found out that my layout of the stripes had been off and they totally did not match up at the inside seam. I decided to keep the front pieces as is, and redrew all the back pieces double checking all my calculations this time and yeah second times a charm and I now have aligned stripes of black and teal mesh wrapping around my legs. 

I also did some tweaking of the pattern at this point, taking about 2"out of the back seam and halving the size of the gusset to account for the amount of stretch in my teal fabric.
I could now start putting everything together – first the diagonal stripes to make the legs, then sewing the legs together down the inseam matching all the stripes carefully, adding in the gusset and then the black stripe down the sides, including the pockets.
To sew everything together I basted each seam on the sewing machine, serged the seam and then topstitched it in place using the decorative stretch stitch, making sure that the mesh segments were turned out so that no seams show through the mesh.
Now it was time to figure out the waistband. I had a strip of black fabric lying around and pinned it in place crossing the ends over each other at the front to make a V shaped wrap and I really liked the way it looked so I cut the pattern out of black for the outside, power mesh for the inside for support and the teal as the inner waistband. I also decided to add another smaller pocket into the waistband and cut a square of teal fabric that is not the main teal fabric but a much thinner poly lycra in the same colour that I already had in stash. I used this to create a small pocket between the inner and outer fabric. I sewed the waistband together along the top edge, including adding the pocket, and then basted it onto the pants overlapping it at the center and sewing the edges into the opposite side.

After wearing my leggings around the house for a while I found that without elastic in the waist they did have a tendency to roll down at the top, plus I knew I wanted to be able to show off the waistband on these pants, but I did not want to show off my bare stomach, so I decided to add a secondary waistband out of my main teal fabric, situated behind my main waistband.
I made this new waistband double the height of the original and serged a strip of 1.5”wide elastic to the top of this waistband and then turned and top stitched it with a lightning bolt stitch. I stitched the black waistband onto the teal waistband along the top edge of the black (leaving a gap for the little pocket) using a lightning bolt stitch.

Conclusion
I really love these leggings, they fit me really well after all the tweaking I did, they are super comfortable and they look great - I especially love the shape they give me with the double waistband. And even better I've been wearing these legging all morning now and not once have I had to hitch up the waistband - it's actually stayed up - this is amazing!

Shirt
Next I needed a shirt to go with my leggings. The first design decision was that it had to have sleeves. I have any number of tank top type shirts but….OK I’ll admit it…I’m lazy about shaving. Now personally I don’t care about hairy armpits, but I understand that it can be really off-putting for some and so to spare them the view of my unshaved underarms I wanted to have sleeves in my shirt. I wanted the sleeves to be fairly short though as you do get very warm in the ninja gym. Next, after making my statement crossover waistband on my leggings I knew that I wanted my shirt to be cropped.
Pattern Design
My original plan was to make a shirt using the sleeves from my raglan sleeve T-Shirt Pattern (The same one I used for round 1) and use mesh, rouleau straps and some draped elements - in the patterned fabric - for the body of the shirt. I cut the sleeves out of the teal fabric and then cut a full back piece out of the patterned fabric as a place holder whilst I worked on the front. For the front, instead of cutting it on the fold I cut the sides as per the pattern and then extended the cut out the full width of the fabric to give me lots of fabric to play around with.
I spent hours playing with different ways to drape that fabric, cutting it here, there and everywhere, twisting it, tying it, draping it. I finally found one arrangement that I liked but when I showed my husband he said it didn’t match the rest of the outfit – it looked too much like a nice top rather than an activewear top. I turned my whole shirt around and showed it to him with the straight fabric in the front and he said it worked much better. So then I thought maybe I could make a plain front and just do a drape at the back instead, but after much rearranging that didn’t work either. In the end I re-cut the front and back pieces to the original pattern and added a couple of darts in the front to make the shirt fit snuggly.

But now the shirt was very plain so I started to look at other ways to add interest. Once again I thought about my mesh fabric. I knew I wanted sleeves in my shirt to cover my underarm but I don’t really need the sleeves for warmth so I decided I should add mesh inserts into the top of the sleeve. I did this using the same technique as a welt, cut a trapezoid shape, stitched around it at ¼” and clipped the corners, the sewed the mesh in using a straight stitch. This time I used a black mesh to make it more noticeable and continue the black contrasting theme. To keep it simple I top stitched the seams in place using a straight stitch, but then used my decorative stretch stitch on the hem.

I then added another mesh insert into the back panel of the shirt. I originally planned to make it the full length of the shirt but then realized I didn’t want the back of my bra to be visible so stopped it just at the top of the bra. I used the teal mesh for this insert. I used the last of my black fabric to make a V neckband for my shirt.

I cut the bottom of the shirt with the same angle on the front hem as is found in the waistband of the leggings with just enough hem so that the final shirt would sit just above the waistband. To finish the hem of the shirt I cut a 1”wide facing to add extra weight to the hem to keep it in place.
Conclusion
This top works really nicely with my leggings. I tried it out on my ninja line and I can go upside down without flashing any skin which is useful.

Upon wearing this a little more I found that it was a touch too short and so I went back, unpicked the hem and added a 1.5" black band around the bottom.  I had used up the last of my black fabric so I had to raid through my stash to find something similar - this works well enough.  I tried to keep the same angle as my legging waistband and made it just a smidge smaller than the diameter of the bottom of the shirt to keep it in place.  This works much better.

Sweater
I am a frog....I am always cold…. and I usually freeze trying to get to Ninja class in my workout gear, plus when I run outside in New England in the winter I need a warm sweater to go over the rest of my outfit. And so I decided to make a ultra warm sweatshirt that matches the rest of my activewear outfit.
The main problem was what fabric to use. I was out of the black fabric, only had a small amount of the teal left, plus poly lycra is not that warm so I needed to add another material into the mix. Luckily, I had something in stash. It’s a beautiful thick double faced fleece fabric – super soft, super snuggly in a heathered grey colourway, tending towards the darker end of grey so I thought that it might work with my other fabrics and I was right. To tie this garment into my outfit I used the last pieces of the teal fabric as contrast accents, cuffs, welts, side panels and inside the hood.

Pattern
I actually used a real pattern for this. The Paprika Patterns Jasper Sweatshirt. I’ve made this a number of times before and really love the way it fits. In the past I made a couple of small modifications to the pattern to get it to fit, you can see an Earlier Review Here for full fitting details.
I followed the instructions for the most part with a few minor modifications:
For the pocket welts I used the teal fabric, but interfaced it using a heavy weight interfacing to remove the stretch. For the pocket bags I used scraps of whatever fabric I could find, some of the lightweight teal fabric and some other black jersey from stash.
For the side pieces I wanted to use the teal fabric but I also wanted the warmth of the fleece so I used both. I cut the side pieces out of both fabrics and used strips of fusible seam tape to fuse them together whilst I basted around each edge. I then treated the resulting fabric as a single piece.

To sew the sweatshirt together I used a straight stitch on my main machine, then trimmed down one side of the seam, topstitched the second seam over the first and trimmed off any excess – A faux-faux flat fell.
The sleeves and hood were inserted per instructions, but I then lined the hood in the teal fabric taking care of all the exposed seams on the inside of the hood. Before finishing the hood I added two grommets to the front piece so I could add a cord at the end to secure the hood in place whilst running.

Last up was the bottom band and the cuffs – cut from the very last of the teal fabric. For these I sewed one end to the fabric then turned and top stitched the other side for a neatly finished interior.

I attempted to add thumb holes to the cuffs but after doing one and trying it on the dimensions of the cuff were all wrong and it just felt awkward so I took it off and instead took about 2” out of the width of the cuff and attached as per the bottom band. This really works better for me anyway, the sleeves are long enough that, with the small cuff on the end I can retract my hand right back into the sleeve to keep my hands warm whilst running.
Conclusion:
I love the way this outfit came together and I've now worn it a number of times with no issues at all (except for that change to the shirt to add the band).

For the competition they asked for photos of the outfit in action. I wasn't able to get to the ninga gym in time to take photos there so instead I took my outfit outside to try out our Ninja line and slackline. Not quite as fun as a real course but good for some practice! It was -7C (19F) out the morning I took these photos but I was nice and warm in my sweatshirt - it wasn't quite so pleasant when I took the sweater off to take photos of the shirt and bra however!