Decorated Hoodie

Whilst rooting about in the stash looking for fabrics to make children's clothes for Christmas presents, I found a decent sized remnant of  lovely poly/cotton brushed backed sweatshirting fabric in a dusty wine colour.  I've had it a couple of years and it was a gift from Ruth over at SewRuthie.  Since there was enough to make me a hoodie, the kids dipped out and I used it to make my TNT Burda hoodie pattern.  (BWOF 11/2006 No. 124)

As always with a hoodie project, I fell foul of the need for ribbing, which I never seem to have in the colourway I want to use.  I had navy, black and red in stash but really wanted to trim this with grey.  Once again Remnants from Ruthie came to the rescue.  A small piece of cotton stretch knit fabric (donated at the same time as the sweatshirting) was used to make the trim.  Its not very authentic, but it seems to have worked reasonably well.  In hindsight, I should have made the bottom welt shorter as its not got a lot of recovery, but its wearable as it is.

I wanted a bit of embroidery on the back section.  I didn't have anything I liked on my embroidery module so I bought a new design from EmbroideryLibrary. Its a Damask design, I think it was called Royal Rose and was actually slightly too large for my hoop.  Because of course I didn't think of the size of the hoop when purchasing, only of the size of the design I wanted on my hoodie. Sadly the two didn't really coincide so I had to downsize the design a little bit.  This is very easy to do on my machine; just turn a dial and ask it to recalculate the stitches once its the size you want it to be on the screen.  I told it to be just a hair smaller than the maximum the hoop would take.

I'm not all that experienced at getting my embroidery to come out exactly where I want it so I cheated a bit.  I cut out all the pieces except the back section, then worked out where the grain was, and the middle of the remaining section of fabric, hooped the entire piece, and stitched out my design in the exact centre of the remaining fabric.  Only once the design was on the fabric did I cut my back piece, which allowed me to ensure I had the design exactly centred on the pattern piece and low enough so it could be seen if the hood was down.

I am very pleased with my embroidered hoodie and very inspired by the ease with which the embroidery stitched out on the thick knit.  It did need two layers of stabiliser due to the soft fur on the back.  Using only one layer led to the embroidery stretching out the knit and sinking in.  I had to stop the machine part way through the embroidery and push extra pieces of stabiliser under the hoop very carefully so it had a bit more support.  The test run I did was on less furry fabric and it didn't sink in the same way.   I did see two very lovely designs at Urban Threads that would look good on future hoodies so this may not be the last you see of my embroidery module's skills in relation to garments. 

The zip was a pig to put in but I got there in the end.  Not by any means perfect but its operational and passes the ten yard test.    The topstitching was also a pig, mainly because I thought it would be a good idea to try to topstitch the thick seams with the same embroidery thread I'd used for the design on the back.  Believe me, not a good idea. 

So there we have it; one new hoodie.  Perfect for autumn and winter...which is great, because its starting to get cooler now, and the nights are drawing in.