Cashmerette Harrison

 A short while ago, out of the blue, I found a job posting that sounded really interesting.  Whilst I didn't have all the qualifications they were looking for I decided to apply for the job anyway.  Amazingly enough I actually got an interview!

As soon as I stopped squealing, my mind turned to  - what am I going to wear?   I had my new pair of black Cashmerette Calder pants for the bottom half, but I needed a suitable top to go with it.  The obvious answer was the Cashmerette Harrison shirt - the best fitting button up shirt pattern for a large busted woman.  Plus I've already done most of the fitting for it so it should be a nice easy make.

Next I needed fabric.  I trolled through my stash and came upon a polyester satin fabric I bought in January as a contender for my Pattern Review Sewing Bee round 4 interview outfit.  I never used it as I found something even better in my stash but I figured it would work nicely for this project.  It is beautifully bright a white background with green leaves and colourful leaves printed all over it.

My pattern needed just a few tweaks before I could get started.  First up one of the pattern pieces for the sleeve placket was missing - However, since I didn't like the two piece sleeve placket, I just redrafted it into a single piece sleeve placket.  As for fitting I tried on my previous Harrison to see what modifications were needed.  First up was the shoulder - I  noticed that the shoulder seam was where it should be at the neck edge, but way too far back at the sleeve edge.  I compared my pattern piece to my sloper and sure enough a 1" forward shoulder adjustment was required.  The shoulder seams sits much more nicely now! 

 The only other modification I made to my pattern was to take about 3/8" width out of the center front piece at the arm hole.  I found that the arm scythe was just a tad wide at this point on my previous version.  Looking much nicer now.

With my pattern modified I got to cutting and sewing.  I cut out each piece with an additional 1/8" added to most seam allowances so that I could sew French seams.  Probably not the best idea on those princess seams, they're not the flattest seams I've ever sewn but at least it looks pretty on the inside and with the pattern on this fabric you really can't see the puckering in the seams.

The sew was all going swimmingly till I put my sleeve in. Now on my original Harrison the sleeve sat beautifully - it sits perfectly straight down my arm with no wrinkling what so ever.  But when I basted in my sleeve to check fit, I now have wrinkles galore (and yes I moved the shoulder notch based on the new shoulder position so it wasn't that.  I can only assume its due to the lightweight nature of my fabric this time around. 

I spent quite a bit of time playing around with the sleeve trying to get it to sit nicely.  At one stage I thought I had figured it out.  I cut a muslin sleeve out of another woven I had lying around and it sat perfectly, but once again it was a heavy weight woven and when I modified my sleeve to this new pattern and basted it in I still had wrinkles in my sleeve.  At this point I said close enough.  I'd buy any shirt that fitted as well as this one does without hesitation - so I went ahead and finished up my shirt.

When cutting out I made no attempt at pattern matching.  For most of the shirt you really can't tell, the pattern is so all over the place it's not a problem.  But I did get some twinning on the back as you can see here.

The last step on the shirt was the buttons.  I realised that I don't have any buttons in stash that would work - and I hate buttons and button holes anyway - so once again I went with plastic snaps.  My green snaps matched really well with the fabric print.  

Whilst I'll probably only wear this shirt once it's a great make - And I really do love the fit of this pattern - and with only a few modifications from the printed pattern.

So my final Cashmerette outfit.  Harrison shirt and Calder pants.

Cashmerette Calders

Last post I showed off my Cashmerette Calder Muslin.  I've been loving these pants for lounging around the house - but now I wanted a pair I could wear outside too.  

First I had to adjust my pattern. The muslin was a pretty good fit, but there is always room for improvement. My measurements at the time of making were:

Waist - 39"
High hip (around belly at front) - 44" 
Low hip (around bum) - 43". 

Based on the table below that puts me at a size 14 hip and between 18 and 20 waist.

For my muslin I ended up cutting 16 front and 12 back (for an average of 14 all around) and I felt like that was still a little baggy at the back, and the seams which are meant to be more towards the front were actually closer to my actual sides so I decided this time to reduce the front down to the 14 and leave the back at the 12.  

According to everything I should be grading out to a 18 or 20 around the waist, but with an elasticated waist I didn't feel like I really needed to - the waist just needed to be wide enough to go over my hips.  Despite the numbers saying it shouldn't work (the finished garment measurement for a size 14 at the waist is 41.5" stretched) I cut my waistband to a size 14 at the front and a size 12 at the back and it slides on fine.  My theory is that that 43 - 44" at my hips is squishy - not solid!  The best thing about this is that I don't have all that extra gathering at the back waist which is a look that I don't love. 

So my final pattern modifications were:

Back - Using the Apple back piece, I cut everything (including waistband) to a size 12 and removed 1.5" length between waist and crotch.  For my muslin I ended up taking a 6" hem so this time around I removed 3" from the bottom of the legs (since the legs are pretty much straight I didn't bother removing the length at the shorten lengthen line, just took it off the bottom).  I then also modified the back crotch curve making it more of an L shape based on my latest shorts pattern.  

Front - I trimmed the pattern back to a size 14 all around (including waistband), and took 1.5" out of the rise and 3" off the leg length. 

Now to figure out what fabric to use!

Last time I was at the fabric store I purchased a piece of fabric with the plan to use it for my next pair of pants.  It was on the wool remnants table for $2.99/yard.  It's a black twill fabric - bottom weight, not sure of the fabric content but a burn test showed signs of both poly and natural fibers so I'm guessing a poly wool blend of some sort.  after pre washing my fabric piece turned out to be about 1.75 yards of 60" wide fabric which would be fine for a pair of fitted pants, but now that I wanted to make Calders - Hmmm the pattern says 2 3/8 yards for a size 12- 22 pair of Calders in view A.  Could I do it?

Why yes I could - just.  I had to line things up very precisely and cut pieces upside down but since it's a plain black fabric I figured that wouldn't be a problem.  The only thing I had to do was add a seam down the back of the back waistband as I couldn't fit it on a fold.  I was quite impressed be my tetris skills.

After sewing this once before this was a really easy sew.  I did each seam on the sewing machine and finished on the overlocker/serger.  I did top stitch down the front and back crotch seams.  I find that is where my pants split most if they are likely to split at all so a bit of reinforcement is always good.

When I had attached one edge of my waistband to the pants, I pinned in a piece of elastic and tried them on.  As expected they are a bit scratchy.  I had bought a piece of poly cotton knit to use to line the fabric, but since that was only 45" wide there was no way there would be enough for a lining for my Calders so I went through the stash to see what else I could find.  I came up with two scraps - A pink and a brown and decided to use both up (not enough of either to use one or the other.)  I cut the front out of the brown and the back out of the pink.  I had to do one little patch job on the back of one leg to get it to fit.

Once I cut out my lining - as it was a knit fabric I then went around and cut about 1/4" off each seam just to give it a smidge of negative ease compared to the woven main fabric.  I also cut the length off 3".  I serged the pants lining together with a 1/2" seam allowance and then basted it, wrong sides together to the waistband. 

Then it was just a matter of finishing off my waistband - I didn't use the elastic lengths specified in the pattern just pinned the elastic in one side, tried them on pulled the elastic as tight as I wanted and pinned the other side.  I used three rows of stitching to hold the gathers to the elastic just because I think it looks nicer.  And then finally I turned the hem up 3/8" and then about 3/4" to give a nice long leg line.

I really love these Calders - I think they look fantastic, then feel super comfortable with the elastic waist and the knit lining - perfect for either lounging around the house - or heading out to dinner.  win win all round!

Sorry about the lack of good photos - my camera is playing up at the moment so this is the best I could get!

Flannel Lounge Suit

 This wasn't quite what I was expecting to make when I started my latest project - but you know what - I'll take it!  In fact I really like it!

This all started when I decided I wanted to try out one of Cashmerette's pants patterns.  I know they do an apple and pear pelvis fit and wanted to see for myself just what the differences were.  That gave me two choices - I could buy the Calders or the Ames Jeans.  I decided that in this day and age the elastic waisted relaxed fitted Calder's were probably going to get more wear than the more structured jeans so bit the bullet and bought the PDF version of the Calders.

The first thing I did was to import the two different patterns - the apple and the pear - into Inkscape so I could see where the differences were.  Basically, it turns out that it is just the back pattern piece that differs.  The pear pattern piece has the addition of the dart at the back, it has a longer back rise and and longer crotch extension.

So lets talk fruits.  When I hear apple and pear shape I think Apple - round body with thin legs and arms sticking out andPear - smaller upper body and larger hips/backside.  Then I take a look at myself in the mirror and go - yep I'm an apple I have a protruding belly, a protruding backside and protruding boobs - Basically a round ball in the middle with arms and legs sticking out.  So when I saw the pattern differences I was a bit confused - All the changes for the pear pattern are those that I regularly have to do to get my pants to fit.  I decided to go for it and cut out the pear pattern (I figured it was easier to get rid of extra fabric later than to try and add it back in).

Now to figure out which size.

The waist measurement is always the hardest for me to figure out.  It says to measure where you are narrowest.  For me that is directly underneath the bust - and for once the picture shows that point being used.  OK well then we will go with that. At the point shown on the figure above I'm 36".  That's size 16.  Now for hips.  I'm 43" standing and 46.5" sitting.  Size 12 pear? size 16 apple?  

I decided to just start with a straight size 16 and go from there.

I printed out my pattern with size 12, 14 and 16 printed ( I love the inclusion of layers on a PDF pattern) so that I could do modifications as required.  I used my daughters lightbox to tape all the pieces together without trimming - makes it so much faster.  The one thing that I was a bit disappointed about with this pattern was the large margins around each page. Each page has a 1" margin around it which results in 2" overlaps, which is an awful lot of wasted paper. 

I printed out both the apple and pear back pieces just so I could see in real life the differences (plus I was stupid and didn't read my instructions before printing and printed my main pattern without the grid shown so I wanted to make sure that that 2" overlap was really there).  Then I went and compared them to my last shorts pattern.  The front piece was actually a very close match.  The only real difference was an extra 3.5" rise in the Calders.  The back pattern piece was huge compared to my pattern  a good 6" wider around the back leg and 4.5" wider across the bum.  But my pattern was definitely closer in shape to the Pear than the Apple.

Now I had to find some fabric to use.  Normally when I make a pair of pants I can get them cut out of 2 yards of fabric - so when I buy bottom weight fabric I usually only buy 2 yard cuts.  So the only thing I had in stash that was big enough was denim and I did not want to use that for these pants.....but then I saw this blue and black checked flannel - I'd bought 4 yards of this so I would definitely have enough.  OK so they probably wouldn't be outside pants, but I could do with some more pajama pants - and that would work nicely for a wearable muslin.

I cut the pattern out at a straight size 16 pear and basted it all together.  Wow there was a lot of fabric there.  I loved the way they looked from the front, but the back view was not good.  Plus as expected the rise was just really too high - They were sitting right up under my boobs.  I know that the pattern is designed to be high waisted but it was too high for me.   I pinned out 1.5" and that was better, but I think that for next time I'll take out a full 2"  (which happens to correspond to the 2" I took out of the length of the Cashmerette Harrison shirt I made).  

I then tried taking a good inch out of the width of the back panels - basically cutting the pattern back to a size 12 at the back side and that was better.  I then removed the dart from the back - this was less about fitting than about the look - the dart was just really badly aligned with the checks and it make the back look messy so I removed the darts and took some extra off the side seams to account for it. 

The final modification I made was to take a horizontal dart across the back to pull the checks up to a horizontal line across my backside......so basically what I did was take it back to a size 14  (average of 16 front and 12 back) with an apple back.  OK well now I know for next time!  Though I think they are still a bit too big so next time I think I'll go for a 14 front and grade from 14 at the waist to 12 down the hips and legs with the apple backside.

I trimmed off all my extra fabric, took my basted together pants apart and  then put them together properly following both the instruction booklet and the sew along from the website.  I found later that I had made one mistake when sewing the front crotch seam so the center check didn't quite align with the waistband, but I'd flat felled those front seams for extra strength and wasn't about to try and fix it now.  Otherwise I'd done a pretty good job of matching the checks I was quite happy with the result.

For the final hem I turned the bottom of the legs up a full check width, and then turned it up again,  and then a third time to get the right length - so next time I can probably cut a good 3-4" off the bottom.

So now I had a really cool pair of pants but nothing to wear with them.  You really need either something tucked in or something cropped to show off the top of the pants which is the best part - otherwise they just look baggy and a bit daggy.  

I still had some of my fabric left over so I decided to go ahead and make a top to go with it.  I used the pattern that I created this summer for the gathered neckline top, but wanted to remove the gathering as I wasn't sure how that would go in the flannel fabric.  I simply angled the front neckline out to meet the collar of the shirt.  I think I left about 1/4" too much length in that front slit which makes the front neck buckle just slightly but I'm not going to worry about it now!

I extended the sleeves to full length making then straight for a more flared look to go with the flare of the pants, cut if off straight across at waist height and removed the flare from the under bust area down so that it sits snuggly around the waist.

I love the way both of these pieces turned out and have been wearing them since I got them finished. Its a great outfit for just relaxing around the house - gee do I do much of that at the moment??? 

Precious Cardigan

No - this cardigan has nothing to do with a gold ring.  Precious comes from the fabric being used.  There is always a lot of talk in sewing circles around precious fabric - what is it - when do you use it.  For me - this fabric meets the requirements for precious in more than one way.

First - it was bought whilst on holidays (vacation).  I purchased it last July when I was back in Australia so plenty of good memories to go with it.  

Second - the purchase comes with extra special memories - in this case it was the last time that I went shopping with my Mum.  I needed to go to the RTA and that meant a trip to the big mall - Miranda Fair.  I asked Mum to come with me thinking we could have some time after our errands to browse. Amazingly, I was in and out of the RTA within 10 minutes -  Its a miracle.  So of course we headed next door to Lincraft.  Now I haven't had much success with finding good fabric in Lincraft for many many many years but as if I'm going to pass up the opportunity of browsing fabric of any kind.  So Mum and I went in and wandered around.  And amazingly I found a fantastic fabric.  Its a stretchy velour fabric that feels super soft and squishy - I find a lot of time the velours feel great from the outside, but the inside tends to be scratchy or cold  - not this one though - it was super soft inside and out.  And it came in this beautiful flower/leaf print fabric.   It's not really my usual colour palate - more red and yellow and navy  - none of which feature heavily in my wardrobe, but I knew I wanted it anyway.  Mind you it was not cheap - nothing ever is in Lincraft - so I only got 2 meters rather than the 3 I would normally buy if I didn't know what I wanted to make out of it.

Third - it was expensive.  Precious fabric doesn't have to be expensive, but I do find that most of my expensive fabrics are precious - does that make sense!  It means I don't just want to cut into it for any old project.

Fourth - it sat in my stash for over a year until I finally figured out what it was going to become.

When I first bought the fabric I was thinking winter dress - maybe a kielo?  maybe magnolia?  but really how often do I wear winter dresses? - I hate wearing leggings which really limits the amount of dresses I can wear when it's cold.  I thought about just making a simple shirt, but then I usually just cover most of my shirts with jumpers/sweaters so you never see them.  And so the fabric just sat there - waiting.  Until finally I had an epiphany. Obviously it needs to be a cardigan - a long cardigan.  That would then mean its a focal point when worn and it will get worn lots, plus it'll brighten up those cold winter days - win all around.

So I finally had a plan for my precious fabric - but what pattern to use?  I have a couple of cardigan patterns but none of them were quite what I was looking for so it was back to the drafting board for me.  I started with McCalls 7478 - a 50s style swing coat pattern and through many modifications to the muslin turned out looking nothing like that pattern.  I've done a full write up of the pattern and modifications on my post about the muslin.

Once I had my pattern sorted, it was time to cut out my real fabric. I was terrified that I wasn't going to have enough fabric.  I don't think that the fabric has a nap - but with a velour fabric I wasn't going to take any chances and cut any of the pieces upside down which means each of the 4 main pattern pieces had to fit side by side on my fabric (It wasn't long enough to get more than 1 piece out of the length).  Thankfully it was super wide fabric so I just lined the bottom flared edges of the pattern pieces up side by side  - I had to take just a smidge of the flare out of the back princess seams to get them all to fit but I don't think that was much of a problem.

To get enough fabric to cut the center front pieces a second time as a facing I did have to add a seam in about 3/4 of the way down the panel. 

I basted my fabric together and tried it on and loved it - but there was a little niggle at the back of my mind as to whether it would be warm enough as it was.  The problem was that the day after I cut it out and basted it together we got a second wave of summer - the temperature shot up again and cardigans were not necessary. I knew that if I made a decision then I'd probably say yes it's warm enough, but then when the weather turned cold again I'd never wear it.  So I decided to set it aside until the weather turned again and I could try it out in the cold and make a decision. 

I went on and sewed another couple of garments and the weather remained warm - it wasn't till over a month later that I felt like I could finally make the decision - and after trying it on again I decided yep - I really did want some extra warmth.

Now what fabric to use as lining. I started off with the sleeves as that is where I feel the cold the most.  I knew exactly what fabric I wanted to cut the sleeve lining out of.  The remnants of the really thick cuddle fleece that I used for this sweater - probably the warmest snuggliest sweater I own. 

I already had the center front section cut out of the main fabric as the facing so I just needed fabric for the side front, side back and center back pattern pieces.   I scoured my stash for any other fabrics with a similar stretch and drape and was really only able to find one fabric with enough yardage - a brushed sweater knit that was grey on the back side and light blue with flowers printed on the front.  But I really didn't want to waste that fabric on a lining!  Plus it really didn't match.

Then I had a thought -  I still had a small piece of my main fabric left over - was there enough to at least get the side fronts cut out too?  I found that If I were to cut the pieces on the cross grain  - yes I did.  Thankfully the fabric has 4 way stretch so that wouldn't cause any issues and I didn't have to worry about the nap since it would be on the inside.   That meant that  I only needed a small amount of fabric for the back pieces and I had a small piece of purple stretchy sweater fleece fabric in my remnants pile that would do the job.  Now we were getting somewhere! 

The last step before the final construction was pockets - I had just enough scraps of fabric left to cut out my pockets which I then lined with a stable navy knit from my scraps drawer.

Construction was straight forward - I put together the main body sewing each seam on the machine and then finishing it on the serger.  I then put the entire lining together in exactly the same way.  I knew I had to do something different to the muslin with regards to the interfacing so this time I cut the interfacing to only sit around the neckband and extend out to the front dart.  I did this on both the main pieces and the lining for extra support.  I then added a strip of interfacing down the center front of the lining pieces to provide the support required for the buttons.

I sewed the lining and the main cardigan together up the front edges and around the neckline and then bagged the lower hem edge and top stitched around the front edges.  To attach the sleeve lining to the main body I hand stitched the thick lining material directly to the cuff seam. 

I spent quite a bit of time with my button box trying to decide what to use in the way of colsures - I realised that I didn't want to overlap the front edges of this cardigan so that eliminated normal buttons and button holes.  I thought about adding ties at the bust line, but didn't like that.  In the end I decided on using some small black velvet buttons and lining up three buttons on each side of the coat and using thin black elastic to link the buttons together.

I love my new cardigan - it's super snuggly, to the point where  some days its too warm - though I'm sure that wont last long.

There is only one thing that I would change if I were to make this pattern again and that is to remove, or at least lower, the notch in the collar.  

When I applied the interfacing to the neck band pieces I didn't bother cutting out the notch and when I basted the lining in and tried on my half finished cardigan I really loved the way collar sat.  Once the notch was added back in (unfortunately I had already cut the main fabric with the notch so I had to add it) the neckline, whilst having more visual interest doesn't sit a nicely as it could. 

                             

But overall I really love the way this turned out and I know it's going to get plenty of wear.  I feel like I made the most out of some really stunning fabric. 

Button Cowl Shirt

 First up I just want to say that I love this shirt so much, the fabric, the fit, the design everything.

The idea for this shirt probably had its conception in the blog post from Cashmerette on doing a patchwork sweater hack.  I loved the way they had used a patchwork of leftovers to make a stunning new garment.  I've done this before - my Birthday Isolation sweater  was the latest - and I loved the finished product - so I figured I'd try it again.  I had a rummage through the set of drawers I have of offcuts - All those pieces of fabric that I have that are left over at the end of a project - they are not quite big enough for another project, but not small enough to throw out and found all my sweater knit type materials.  Then I played around with combinations of different fabrics to see what went together.

 I found this zebra print with blue highlights - left over from my Keilo dress.  Also this blue with black geometric designs sweater knit that I used for leggings.  I thought that these would go nicely together, but needed something else to make it cohesive - plus I needed more fabric so I pulled out a left over piece of black knit fabric as well.  This fabric is not a sweater knit, but the weight was about right to go with the other two pieces.  I have no idea what I used the rest of this material on - but it's all gone now.

Now that I had three coordinating fabrics I had to figure out how to put them together.  I sat down with some coloured pencils and my croquis to try and figure it out.  During this time This post from Shwin & Shwin popped up in my bloglovin' feed.  It's a tutorial for a button cowl neck that can be applied to really any raglan pattern.  It looked very similar to the Cashmerette Tobin sweater that I've been wanting to make ever since the pattern was released. I decided I would give it a go.  What I really like about his design is the angle on that collar.  I decided to play that up and place my different fabrics on a diagonal.

Since this design uses a raglan sleeve pattern I started with  my basic raglan sleeve T shirt pattern that I used most recently here.    I traced the pattern pieces out again, this time removing the fold and creating full pattern pieces for front and back.  I then did a little modification to straighten up the side seams a bit -  I removed 1" of the width of the pattern on each side at the back and moved it to the front pattern piece. I also turned it back into a crew neck rather than a V neck   Once I had my pattern drawn up I started sketching in some diagonals - I settled on rectangles 6.5" wide x 9" long and drew them onto my pattern.  I was originally just going to cut the rectangles and make the fabric then cut the pattern pieces out of the fabric, but when I went back and looked at my offcuts I realised I didn't have enough fabric to do that.  So instead I drew in my lines on my pattern and cut the pattern up.  This meant there were a bunch of smaller pattern pieces that I could squish in .

I tried to keep the grain of the fabric going the right direction for each piece - and for the zebra print and black fabrics that was fine, but I really only had small scraps of the blue and black and it took some real finagling to get all my pieces cut out and I had to totally ignore the grain.  In the end I had to resort to cutting my sleeve piece in half and piecing it back together to get them all cut out - oh well a few more seams isn't going to hurt this project.

Once I had all my little pieces cut out I started putting them all together.  Each seam was basted on the sewing machine then finished on the serger.  I made the front, back and sleeves and basted the shirt together and then it was time to figure out the collar.  

I measured my neckline 24.5" and then had to decide how tall I wanted my cowl.  I knew I wanted it pretty big and randomly chose 10".  I then had to find enough fabric to cut out strips of 10" tall fabric.  I didn't worry about keeping them all the same width, just cut them as large as I could.  Again I had to piece together small pieces of the blue/black as most of my scraps were triangles by this stage, but I finally managed to get enough strips to alternate black, patterned, black, patterned, across both the inside and outside of the cowl.  

I sewed all my strips together, added 1.25" strips of interfacing at the front and back edges of  both the inside and outside, then sewed the inside and outside together down both sides and across the top and turned it right side out. 

Next up was the placket.  I was all out of blue and the zebra is a much more drapey fabric, so I decided to use the black fabric for the placket.  based on the tutorial I needed a strip 4" wide for the placket and 2" wide for the facing.  The length was determined based on the longest scrap I could find that was 4" wide - it ended up 4.5" long.

 

The tutorial walked through how to add the facing and placket and I followed that without any issues, same for adding the collar.  I used wonder tape when it came to top stitching the underside of the collar down just to make life a little easier. 

I then added snaps to close the placket - I decided on the plain black snaps and put them 1.5" apart right along the placket and up the edge of the collar.

       

Then I just needed to finish the sleeves and bottom.  I decided to use a plain black ribbing I have in stash - an easy and neat finish. 

I tried my new shirt/sweater on and instantly loved it....but there was just one minor issue.  With the big cowl/collar my chest and neck were nice and warm, but my arms - not so much.  I always seem to feel the cold most in my arms. So I decided to try and line the sleeves.  I went back to my fabric off cuts drawer and found a fabric that really didn't match with the rest of my stash.  A sweater knit in shades on pink and brown.  I figured that it was going to be hard to make anything else out of that and decided it would make a perfect lining.  I stuck my pattern pieces back together and had just enough fabric to get two sleeves cut out - assuming I could ignore the grainline again - oh well.  To attach them I sewed up the length of the sleeve, then attached it around the cuff,  I sandwiched the cuff between the main sleeve and the lining and sewed it together so that when the lining was turned back the seam was all nicely covered.

 

I pulled the sleeve up the inside and then turned under and hand stitched the raglan seams to the seam allowance of the main shirt.  This makes it really neat inside.

And NOW I had a fantastic shirt.  I love the colours and the placement of the fabrics. I love the cowl. and I love that it's warm and snuggly.

The one and only issue that I have is across the shoulders at the back.  It seems to be just a smidge too snug across the shoulders - you can see some drag lines in the photo below.  I think that it's got to do with the seam line at the top of the sleeve.  The seam reduces the amount of stretch in the fabric around the arm and it's just a touch too tight.

I'm pretty sure the rest of the wrinkles are just from contorting my arm around to point the remote at the camera - always a problem I have with back photos.

Now onto my next patchwork shirt - I have another three fabrics that will work together, but the sketch I've come up with is awfully 80's looking. I may have to rethink my fabric placement.

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.