Pink Teddy Fur oversized hoody

Now I need to catch up with reading people's blogs.Its been a very hectic few weeks for me and I am well behind in my "blogging duties" so this weekend my plans are to pop around and visit other blogs and see what I have been missing out on.

This is my latest creation and it took absolutely ages to make it. Its an oversized sweatshirt type hoody top to hopefully keep mecozy and warm over the next few months.

I really liked two tops recently that are RTW. 

One from H&M was just too expenisve to buy at £99.

The other was more reasonable but had sold out by the time I even noticed it. This is just a hoody.

Also I wanted it in "teddy fleece" also known as Sherpa or if you wanted to buy the fabric from a fabric shop then its actually usually called Borg. Well I think I should be able to make either of these so order 3m of Borg fabric. And for far less than £99. These 3m cost £26 including delivery (off Ebay). Fleece - as in normal fleece would have cost a similar amount. It would also have been far easier to sew up as it turns out.

I decided after washing, drying and just looking at my fabric for the next couple of weeks that actually the best pattern for this is probably a mens sweatshirt pattern so thats what I ended up using. 

The pattern used was McCalls M6614. I have used this pattern loads of times before mainly for Mick but accasionally also to make a big top for me. For example the red and black T shirt  for Mick and my skull hoody .

I also decided that although I love the H&M zip neck I am far more likely to wear a hoody so thats what I went with. It would be easy to alter the pattern for a funnel neck though because its just a tube and the zip could go in at the shoulder seam when lining up the funnel neck seam to it, so giving the nice zip neck. But hoody it will be for my effort. I nearly bought some more fabric in fact to make a second version. So glad I didn't!

Well possibly this is the most difficult fabric I have ever sewn up!

My overlockers both hated it. One - the older one- got damaged years ago and it was cheaper to replace than fix it. I bent the upper and lower cutters and generaly wrecked it where I got something jammed inside it.  I did eventually bend it back but its never had quite the right tension since and usually I use the newer one. I tend to think its worth keeping just for edging things like woven cottens for neat edges. 

Well the newer one kept breaking needles. It jammed and I gave up on it. I have since oiled and cleaned it but have yet to rethread the thing. I so hate threading overlockers.

This fabric is so thick it will not feed properly.  No matter how much I tried to adjust I just could not get it to work. I decide in desperation to see if the older one might be able to finish what I started. It feeds much better and actually sews - but then the seams start falling appart first time I put any pressure on them. You are not meant to pull the fabric through when overlocking but it just does not feed else so thats the only way to get it sewn up. This then leads to wavy seams. 

Weak seams!

Inside showing the edges with wavy edges

What to do? 

I zigzag with my normal Janome machine just inside the overlocked edges so giving it a second stretchy seam. Luckilly this was cut big so intended to bean over top. 

Needles again keep breaking. I sew as slow as possible. But at least the fabric does feed here and I get to reinforce the sewn seams so now I decide I had best line with something because it will make it warmer and give it a bit of body. Also its the only way to hide what will now be raw inside edges that keep shedding all over what ever I wear under this. This sheds loads on cut edges and sticks to everything. Since I wear a lot of dark colours and black thats not a good thing to be constantly having to deal with. Not when you have pale pink fluff everywhere anyway. This fabric came in very few colour choices so this pale pink was the best available. For me anyway.

Please ignore the background mess in these photos. My house gets busy and it was tree decorating time when these were taken so there is mess everywhere.

I decide on some blue football shirt mesh ( its not really mesh but has a texture). I have had this fabric hanging round for ages and do not actually like the colour much. I use the wrong side of this because it might be a bit rough on the right side because what is now my right side is normally outside the football shirts. For a lining it will be against the skin unless I wear a long sleeved top under it so might be uncomfortable. Anyway the safest way is not to risk it and use the smooth side. Its a bright royal blue but there is not enough for both the body and sleeves so I use some cheap polyester (white) for the sleeve linings and just do the front and back in this bright blue. I can at least sew these up with my overlocker. I line up the inside and outside and pin lining to body at shoulder and at hems. 

Decide I should add pockets so I cut the pocket part off the Peppermint jersey dress pattern I used for the grey glitter dress.  Also I now know how to fix those gaping pockets because I got them to work on this top! Thats something to sort probably over Christmas/ New Year. I at least learned something useful making this foruse with other patterns too. 

I then stick my pocket pieces back on the dress pattern. Thats a good idea because now I realise how to make those pockets work I may just make another dress with them. So far I made several of these dresses but after the first one I leave the pockets off. Though its a very wasteful way to add pockets and might be better to sew them in seperately anyway as I did with this top. These pockets work and stay inside eve with no hands in them.

 

Anyway, so I zigzag the pockets in. Pin lining in place. Sew lining to sleeves from inside to keep nice and neat edges and this worked well so I need to try to remember for the future how I did that. Its something I usually struggle to do. I realise then I got one of them twisted but I did successfully manage to take that appart with no holes appearing in the Borg fabric so resewed that. The taking of that seam back appart took another afternoon due to how difficult it was to see the stitching on this fabric!

By now I have been at this very simple and I expected straight forward to make garment for a full month!

And I still have yet to sew the hood together or work out how to finish the hem either because its not going to work well to just hem this now the overlocking was abandoned because the raw edges shed constantly so I need to neaten somehow - hence the lining idea. 

Ah another week of fiddling around and the hood is together - both hoods because I decide to line with the same fabric. Fluffy inside and out sounds like a good winter option and its now -7degC in the mornings here so yes its getting colder.

A few days where I pin and unpin my hood. Then zigzag the outer hood onto my neck and that went very well. I decided after thinking about this for a while the best thing to do will be to hand sew the lining of the hood down to cover all raw edges. I hate hand sewing but none of my sewing machines have a chance in hell of coping with what will now be 3 layers of Borg and one layer of football shirting. No way will that work and it could even break my very precious and much loved machine. So I decide that can wait till I sort the only remaining problem and I start to think that actually this over-shirt may even work. 

I decide on a hem band smilar to what you have on sweatshirts. So I cut a wide strip of fabric thats slightly shorter than the hem edge of my top. I overlock my outer Borg fabric to my inner football shirting lining fabric and that will both secure them together and neaten the edge and stop the borg from shedding. Then I sew the strip of edging together into a circle. Fold in half and overlock really slowly around the raw edge.

To attach I pin in place so its even because the strip is deliberately slightly shorter than the hem itself. Hopefully that will ensure its not too baggy. Then zigzag them together. I did every bit of sewing so very slowly and it did work. I even double stitched the hem on with a second round of zigzags. Should have double sticthed the hood on but I didnt so I am just hoping that will stay togteher now.

Then finally I hand sewed the hood lining into place. Again because I overlapped the neck it took a bit of working out but its a bit easier than expected because this thick fluffy fabric hides my dodgy hand sewing so that is actually a bonus. It was faster to sew than I expected for the same reason and I am now just hoping this will all stay together when worn. I am also happy to have had the fluffy borg fabric on both outer hood and lining. Its very cozy.

 Its taken nearly 6 weeks to make this from cutting out to finishing which is ages. I usually complete a garment every 1-2 weeks so I sew lots. This has been a serious challenge and its such an easy design. When I have made this in Tshirt fabric I have taken a day or maybe two days to make it. Just shows you how choice of fabric can really hamper how long it takes to make something.

Though in the end I am pleased with this. Its turned out better than I actually imagined it would and is warmer than I planned due to having to have a lining. I never intended to add a lining at all but its the difference between a warm cozy fluffy top and an outside cozy garment. This is more coat-like and will be amazing now the weather has really started to get cold. 

One thing about this I have learned is I will be highly unlikely to ever make anything garment wise from this fluffy Borg fabric ever again as long as I live. I really thought several times over the past month or so I have wasted my money on this one. I have managed to save this but its been a serious challenge and just shows how something you think will be straightforward may in fact become the biggest challenge in years. I might buy Borg fabric again though but to make something easy and simple like a throw - with lining fabric or maybe with two layers of borg. Then overlocking will be unnecessary. Its certainly stretched me to make this and not just throw it in the bin when it all went wrong. And I still have to fix my "good" overlocker before I can make anything else so I think maybe I will be knitting rather than sewing for a few weeks after this one. 

Mind you it does also prove to my other half that it really is worth keeping my second rate damaged machines as well because without the tension being out on my old overlocker this would have been impossible to make without having it shed constantly for ever after!

And in the end I really do love what I made here:

 

So a distaster becomes a great winter garment but itdid take a large amount of effort and perseverance to get to the point this is a proper wearable garment. Still whats the point of having a hobby with no challenges?

Take care and thanks for popping over.

Now I need to catch up with reading people's blogs.

Bracken