Sweatshirts

[mechanonymouse]

I said I needed to make jumpers in my 2019 Make Nine and threw a photo of the Gray Uniform Hoodie from Ottobre Design Magazine Kids 6/2018 as a placeholder pattern. Inspired by both getting soaked when the laundry needed doing and the Great British Sewing Bee Sewalong Sustainability Week, I decided to try it out with two jumpers that I wasn't wearing.

The first was a Burda Style pullover I made myself and blogged about here and the second was a M&S jumper dress I bought very cheap on sale for less than the cost of fabric thinking it would be a quick fix to have a pretty jumper. After getting it home and removing the attached glittery ruffled miniskirt it became apparent they had done something very weird with the sleeves. They were dropped shouldered with a puffed cap causing the body to pull strangely.



The lighter green colour fabric is two-way stretch only so there wasn't enough fabric with the direction of stretch right to make the full length hoodie and the M&S jumper was already a cropped jumper without enough fabric in the sleeves to make properly set in or drop shoulder sleeves. So they were combined and the resultant hoodie cropped and colour blocked. (Apologies for the eye roll, I'm a reluctant model but the jumper is a better fit on me than the less reluctant model.)


There was a sequined bird applique on the front of the M&S jumper which needed to be removed but damaged the fabric in a couple of places. My mum hand embroidered the snowflakes over the top of the hand darned repairs. So they are both functional and help to integrate the pink lettering on the hood with the rest of the hoodie. The pink ribbon for the hood channel was chosen for the same reason. The vertical band down the center is asymmetric and the hood is set so the cross over happens on the seam to make that look intentional.


I traced the size 158 straight off and added a 1cm seam allowance. The pattern instructions are clear and easy to follow although because of the pieced together nature of this jumper I didn't actually follow them. As a pattern it is true to size, I normally wear girls 158cm and boys 152cm tops in ready to wear because the shoulder width on the boys 158cm is always slightly too big which makes the armscyes sit wrong. As you can see the shoulders are slightly too wide on this pattern (even with an accidental reduction 1cm reduction) so I've made a 2cm narrow shoulder adjustment on the pattern which should draw the armscyes in and make them sit better.

Overall it's a really nice hoodie that I'm going to get massively more wear out of than I was either of the two jumpers that it's made out of. I currently have another jumper sitting with the pattern waiting for me to work out if I can finagle a full length version out of it but that one is wearable on mum so I'm not just taking it to pieces.

It's mid March, one of my make nine plans is done and I've made progress on two others!