One of my aims this year has been to make clothes that I will wear all the time. I love making dresses more than anything, but I don't have much opportunity to wear them and making every day casual wear is something I've been looking towards to make the most of my hobby. I'm a bit behind everyone else in the sewing community because I only just purchased the Tilly and the Buttons Stretch book, despite it being out for some time and this is the first item I've made from it. It's also the first time I've refashioned a previous make and I'm really glad that this is going to get a lot more wear than the first garment this fabric was made into.
Fabric
I bought this fabric from Dragonfly Fabrics 2 years ago. It's a sweatshirting fabric so has a gorgeous fleece on the underneath that makes it very snuggly. I actually bought 2m to make a Thread Theory Strathcona Henley top for my husband as a surprise Christmas present. Happy as he was with it, it was too tight across the chest so he never really wore it - this fabric is not a stretchy knit! Although it isn't stretchy, it is quite substantial and feels high quality. In the end, we decided to repurpose the fabric because as nice as the idea was, it was never going to be worn otherwise.
Luckily, a man's sweatshirt has big enough panels to get bodice pieces for a much smaller woman. I did have some remnant pieces from before so I was able to find enough fabric to complete the project. I used a lace knit that has been in my stash for four years (I can't think what to make with it) for the hood lining. The lighter grey was a good call because it looks better close to the face than the darker jersey remnants that I could have used from the stash.
And for the drawsting - brand new shoe laces gifted by my husband (no idea why he had a pair of unused shoe laces to hand).
Pattern and Instructions
You only need to look at the Learn to Sew tab on the sidebar to see how much I rate Tilly's products for beginners. She uses colour photographs that show you exactly how each step should look and she has lots of detail in separate sections for any new skills or techniques. Everything is written so clearly it doesn't matter if you're not used to sewing patterns. This book is designed to be accessible to sewing newbies as well as those with more experience. Although I'm confident sewing with knits I did read the rest of the book and found it useful - especially the pages on using overlockers. It really is quite comprehensive - the online class 'Learning to Sew Knits on a regular machine' (more information and review here) will get you started and give you enough to sew most garments. This book gives you pretty much all the guidance you need to begin and move on further in sewing knits.
The pattern pieces for the Stella hoodie are found on multi-pattern pages in a pocket at the back of the book. This means they need to be traced off before you use them. Not a problem really because there aren't many pieces for this pattern. There are suggestions on alterations and other variations that you can hack from this pattern, but I went with it as it is. I put this together in an afternoon, with the most amount of time being spent on the hood construction. I used just a regular sewing machine with a zig zag stitch and revelled in the fact that I didn't have to unpick a single thing. No mistakes - all went smoothly. (Somehow I do think that if you find something easy or enjoyable to make you also enjoy wearing it more?).
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