I make hoodies... and mistakes

Last month I did the Peek-a-boo Pattern Shop sew along on her Facebook page.  I usually don't do sew alongs, partially because I get a bit intimidated by everyone's creations, but mostly because I am terrible at sticking to timelines.  I never know from day to day how the kids are going to be when I sit down to sew, so I get very nervous about sticking to short timelines.  But it was the Hangout Hoodie and I just knew my kids would LOVE it.  If you don't have the pattern yet, I highly recommend this one... the instructions are clear, the pattern pieces are easy to put together, and as always, the finished product is so stinkin' cute, you'll get compliments everywhere you go. 

As with most things I decide to make for Inara, she likes to be part of the "creative" process.  I show her which shelves she can choose from, and she picks her fabrics out.  Most of the time she comes up with some good combinations.  Occasionally, I look at them and attempt to convince her to do something else.  Her logic is usually along the lines of "if it's pretty, it matches."

I have quite a few of Amy's patterns, so I did my cursory skim through and got to work.  While I love the fit and variety of PDF patterns, I really hate cutting and taping all the pattern pieces, so for me, that's always the biggest hurdle when I decide to do a new pattern.  No matter how hard I try, my lines are just a tad off here or there... not that it seems to effect things in the end... but still, clearly cutting and taping is beyond my abilities.

So I worked up the first one, and I TOTALLY messed up the placket to attach the hood to the body.  I mean, it was BAD.  The fabric somehow snagged under the footplate and pulled sideways and sliced a chunk off toward the bottom!  I've been using my serger pretty much daily for over six months, and had never had this happen before.  I'm no master with my serger, but I'm pretty confident with it - I can do ruffles, and rolled hems and lettuce edges... but man, this was bad.  So after swearing a bit at my machine (clearly it could not have been operator error), and stomping around in a tantrum because I knew I didn't have enough to start over, I took a deep breath and did the best I could to mend it and figured, oh well, its for Inara and she'll love it and I just won't post it to the Peek-a-boo group and no one will ever know...

Then I went on to make Connor's out of some very nerdy fabric I had collected and had no idea what I wanted to do with...  The button is from Incomparable Buttons, which is a pretty cool company.

Then I decided I really loved them and made two more... one more dress one for Inara and a short sleeved one for Connor...

Connor who insists on picking out his own clothes in the morning, goes for this one all the time...I even got adventurous with his and made the contrast band at the bottom And look how great the placket came out on all three of them!?  But then a couple weeks later, someone in the group was struggling with her placket and I realized I was doing a dis-service by NOT showing the pictures.  Because, in the end, Inara loves it, wonky or not, and it shows that everyone makes mistakes, really silly ones sometimes, but here's some encouragement for everyone who has sewn a totally crooked seam, sewn right side to wrong side (we've all done it), or spent an evening on the couch ripping seams kicking yourself for being so stupid...

See how wonky the placket is?  And that's AFTER I fixed it?  I was going to trash the whole thing, but look, she doesn't even notice that it's messed up.  So chin up, we all have had some long dates with the seam ripper, and I bet we've all trashed a project or two that could have been saved. 

Stay tuned... my first "tester" gets released tomorrow and I'm super excited to show it off!