Kids Clothes Week wrap: a reversible hoodie

Wait, what? Kids Clothes Week Winter has been and gone? Where did it go??  Oh hang on, I know. That was those seven days in a row I spent wrestling with a reversible hoodie.  

If you follow me on instagram, you've seen this plenty already, but I wanted to blog it anyway as it was quite an achievement. To begin with, contrary to appearances above, he adores it (the face up there is just a photoshoot special). He adores it so much that if I let him he would wear it until it had to be peeled off. It's a massive, enormous, boy-sewing win.

It was also a total labour of love. Actually that's not true - it was a labour of swearing.  The problem is not with the pattern as such, it's just the nature of the beast: reversible = multiple layers of fabric.  Multiple layers and much precision.

And in using fleece for both the inside and out, I did not help myself.  Oh no. Especially not when I also added fleece pockets (on the outside only, thank God). For the first time EVER I actually resorted to hand basting the zip - because at the centre front/pocket intersection, when you add up all the seam allowances, I was dealing with this:

It took sewing determination I didn't know I had. I even made a special trip to the shop for a separating zipper (because doh obviously. Why did I not buy a separating zip the first time??) Reversible zips were nowhere to be found, so this is in fact a non-reversible reversible hoodie, a fact in the end I was supremely grateful for: it sat so thick and unwieldy around the neck, I ended up topstitching down that blue band at the hood seam, to keep everything sitting more or less neatly. It works, but there's clearly a right side and a wrong one.

The new, shiny, separating but non-reversible zip handily came with no pull attached, which clearly is great for four year olds. Good thing I happened to have bought tons of funky coordinating ribbon the other day. (Available in Veritas in lots of yummy colour/print combos, Belgian readers!)

And that's that. Despite being a surprising amount of work, in a week where I was inexplicably exhausted to begin with, this hoodie is one of my favourite things I've ever made. The fleece was half-metre remnants, the 2 colours of ribbing were all the scraps I had left from earlier projects - all in all it was cheap and stash-busting and it came out SO COOL!

This morning, wearing it of course, and cuddling me manipulatively, he asked me to make him another one exactly the same.  Which I will, as soon as I find some NOT-F*CKING-FLEECE to make it with.

I am not sewing with fleece again for as long as freaking possible.