BWOF Hoodie

This is my go to hoodie pattern and comes from Burda World of Fashion 11 / 2006.  It matches the Barb trousers I made the other day but the completion of the hoodie was delayed by a broken overlocker and a zipper that was out of stock. 

This is another garment in the fabulous grey and white plush sweatshirting from Fine Fabrics in Harrogate, with ribbing trim from McCulloch and Wallis in London.  I love this fabric so much that I am rather tempted to go back and buy enough to make another pair of trousers since I have just enough of the ribbing left to make the waistband portion which seemed rather as though it was meant.   

The pattern itself is not difficult to construct.  I don't do the hood the way the instructions say though.  I don't like the strings in hoodies, they get in my soup.  :)  Also, I usually manage to create a bomb crater sized disaster of a hole whilst trying to insert the required eyelets through which the strings will protrude, so I tend to avoid the whole thing and have a stringless hood... which is what we have here.  Also, I thought it would look nicer if the hood attachment seam was covered by trim as well as the zipper tape, so I used white satin bias trim on both areas.  The hood attachment seam was covered with a strip of the plush, sewn on by hand, which was very fiddly, and took a whole evening.  In reality, this should have been a mock fell seam, but I got carried away with my newly fixed overlocker and overlocked the seam without thinking.  This then looked horrible on the inside, and the inside shows, hence an evening of faffing about with a small strip of stretchy plush and a lot of pins. 

Otherwise, its pretty much as Burda intended it, though I didn't follow their instructions, I just motored along on my own, doing what I wanted in the order I felt like since its not a particularly complex pattern and I've made a few of these things before.  I did attach the zipper a different way.  Although I don't think you are supposed to do the zipper this way, I tacked the fronts closed, pressed the seam allowance open, laid the zipper teeth down the tacking, face down, pinned it into place within an inch of its life and then turned it right way out and carefully stitched the zipper into place from the front. Then I opened the tacking up and my zipper was pretty much where I wanted it to be, met at the top and bottom and looked reasonably neat.  To add to the neatness I actually sewed the zipper in a little further away from the centre line than I might have done on a thinner fabric.  I find the zippers gape less on thicker fabrics if I do that. 

The bottom ribbing is a bit of a miracle.  I was sure that it was ruined beyond redemption at one point but a press brought it back to life.  My newly mended overlocker (supposedly mended overlocker I should say) stopped dead one inch into the ribbing application and refused to be resuscitated.  On the basis that "I've started so I'll finish" I spent an hour hand turning the wheel to apply the ribbing and found I'd stretched things out a bit in the process.  But a good press seems to have rescued the situation. 

The overlocker is now back in the shop waiting to be collected for another attempt at getting it fixed. To be strictly fair, the first time it went in, the problem was intermittent so its possible that it didn't display its true colours for the engineer.  However, this time around it just wouldn't go at all for me so I assume it will behave similarly for the engineer and the problem will be able to be identified and fixed.