Saturday, January 21, 2012

White Mage Hoodie in Miniature–Part 2

Click here for WHM Hoodie in Miniature - Part 1

Gah! I didn’t get quite finished today. I came really close, but a few hours ago I realized the zipper I’d purchased was the wrong color. ***Who knew red could clash with red?*** Since I have to wait til tomorrow to go grab a new zipper I figured there was no rush to get the lining put in tonight. Pending no serious disasters I should be done tomorrow though.

I did get a lot accomplished for the day. This morning I transferred all the pattern pieces to butcher paper so I could save the pattern, in tact, for future use. Then I drafted the red triangle borders that would line the edges of the hoodie. There was a tiny bit of a hiccup here. I made a stupid mistake and had to go back to redraft the back accents.

White Mage Hoodie Accents

Do you see it? The writings a bit small, but it’s there on the right.

I got a bit seam allowance happy and added the extra distance to my center back piece even though it was supposed to be cut out on a fold. Ugh! That would not make for a very pretty ‘triangle’ right in the middle of the hoodie. As soon as I finished cutting out my first red piece I realized my mistake. I felt sooooo dumb. It just goes to show that no matter how meticulous you are, it’s always possible to make tiny mistakes. Luckily these pieces are so small that not very much fabric was wasted by my mess up.

Other than that the day went by without a hitch. It basically just turned into a big assembly line of applique before quickly stitching the pieces together.

WHM Hoodie Assembly Line

The only difficult part of this was matching up the pockets to the front hoodie panels. Because the pockets sit so low on the jacket, the red accents invade their territory. I had to draft some extra triangles to make them all line up and then baste stitch everything to make sure nothing went askew. If I make the hoodie again in future I’m thinking about just leaving the pockets off all together. I mean, they’re cute and all, but what use does a 9 month old really have for pockets in their coat?

On a slightly unrelated side note, I really need to learn to use my fancy new embroidery machine. I really want clothing tags to sew inside my garments that have my companies name on them. I know people don’t normally see them, but they seem a bit more professional to me. Like it finishes off a piece. Plus it tends to show a bit more pride in the item. Since I don’t really have the time to spend fiddling with my new toy yet, I just used my regular machines alphabet function to stitch out my company name on some twill tape. It’s not as professional as a single embroidered tag, but it turned out kinda quirky cute.

Beaded Fae Designs

I stitched out his name too and added it into the front of the lining. I’m not sure of the whole ‘kids name inside their clothing’ protocol, but I thought it’d add a nice personal touch.

Whelp, it’s getting rather late, so I think I’m going to head off to sleep. That way I can wake up bright and early tomorrow and finish this awesome little hoodie!

Click here for WHM Hoodie in Miniature - Part 3: Done!