Planning and Design

I originally planned to make a t-shirt for Pocket Card Jockey in the spirit of the other game t-shirts I have been making recently, but I love this game so much I felt it deserved more 🤣 I decided that I don’t want to have multiple of the same style for any of my clothing, but did want another hoodie, so took elements from other tops I’ve made:

• Main body (but simplified) from the Simpson Sweatshirt
• Hood from the Fitzroy Hoodie but simplified to not have the middle panel (this was a mistake…)
• Front Pocket from the Pearlescent Hoodie

Then of course I needed a super sparkly HTV for super unity 😁 An excuse to try the Siser Twinkle HTV. It wasn’t too hard designing the horse icon, but I had troubles finding a free calligraphy-style Japanese font. Ended up using ZinHenaBokuryu.

Materials

• Pattern:
  • Combination of three patterns
• Fabric:
  • Airforce Blue Cotton French Terry Knit (Homecraft Textiles)
• HTV
  • Siser Twinkle – Royal Blue
  • Siser Easyweed – Ocean

Construction

Because I’d made all these patterns before it was really easy to put together. I just needed to be really careful when applying the front HTV. so that the pouch pocket would fit and it did 👍

I did a couple of lazy adjustments like just adding on the extra width required for the hood without the middle panel and widening the neckline so I could attach the hood.

Reflections

I really like this hoodie! Although the twinkle looks brightest when you are the one wearing it lol. And also the hood doesn’t look good when worn up, it really needed that middle panel haha. All good cos I don’t wear hoods up often, but noted for future hoodies.

Things I learnt:

• Don’t use my heat press to mark the middle of the fabric for HTV positioning because the pressure is too high and the crease won’t press out when the HTV is applied 😣
• For this particular pattern (Simpson Sweatshirt) it’s better to edge the sleeve components separately instead of trying to sew, then edge together. It will still be an awkward side seam but at least it will be nicely edged.
• Back designs do need to be centred vertically. I thought since this pattern has a ‘dipping’ back it would look weird if I centrered it but I was wrong 😅
• Since I decided not to line the hood, I should have extended the hem. Still worked out fine though (the hemming part that is) 😁
• I prefer using the cotton terry fabric instead of ribbing for the cuffs/hem. Which is great because it means I don’t have to buy a second ribbing fabric (and try to find a matching colour…) for these kinds of projects 🎉

Categories: Sewing

Tagged as: Style Arc

hikaru