Two Stitches – Charlie Hoodie

I bought this pattern ages ago, and have only used it once. It didn’t go down very well, because the head opening was deemed to be too small.

I dont like using a pattern only once. It makes the garment relatively expensive if you add the whole of the pattern price into the cost.

I am hoping that little brother’s head will be proportionately smaller, or that making a larger size will improve the relative head opening size. Additionally, as it turns out, this fabric is quite stretchy, so i think that this version will be more acceptable.

This make was meant to be… I have been using up sizable leftover pieces of fabric, before littl’un is too big for smaller pattern sizes. I think that i bought the fabric during lockdown and used it for my own Hebden t-shirt. There was just enough left to get a hoodie, provided that i added a seam into the head gussett.

Actually, the fabric wasn’t very user friendly on the sewing machine. I did everything that i could on the overlocker, which was fine, but when the sewing machine swallowed the fabric more than once, and i had to remove the foot and needle to get it out of the feed dog, i reverted to hand sewing the hem and hood facing. This might not be a very clever solution for a hoodie for a two year old, who will no doubt play boisterously in it (I hope), but its better than lumps of thread in visible places.

The pattern lends itself to batch production! All of the overlocker sewing; all of the machine sewing; pressing, and hand stitching. You will see that these days i neither follow pattern layouts (almost never) nor the order of instructions.

The pattern includes a tunic length version. I’m not sure when you would wear the tunic version, and it would not have fitted onto the piece of fabric that i had. If this version is acceptable, i will re-use the pattern again next winter – maybe or maybe not using left over fabric!