The second piece of precut fabric I bought recently, was light double-thread sweatshirt knit. I bought it with joggers for Alex in mind and these have now been made. The fabric, unfortunately, seems not of high quality (perhaps too much polyester content?) and pills lightly, so we'll see how well they'll favour in the long run.
My latest make - a hoodie and sweatpants set for Gaby. I used two of my already tried Burda patterns, based on which I made a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie for myself. When Gaby was home in November, I asked to try on my items and marked the corrections I would need in order to make hers fit her properly, so I hope I've succeeded. Of course, a lounge set is not a ballroom gown, so even if the fit is not perfect - this is knitwear, it's forgiving :)
The fabric for the set is sweatshirt fleece (I think this is the name in English, but I'm still not sure about knit fabric names in different languages) - it is smooth on the outside and fluffy and soft on the inside and very warm. I bought 1.5 m of it and it was perfectly sufficient, with a fairly big remnant, that I intend to combine with a couple of other remnant and make a color-block hoodie for myself.
The pants are size 34 and they are a bit tight on me, but I hope they'll be just fine on Gaby, as she is taller and slimmer than me. They have comfortable deep pockets in the side seams. The original pattern includes long cuffs and is low cut, but I elongated the length of the legs and shortened the cuffs and also raised the waist line by 2 cm.
The second of my additional Christmas presents for family members is ready - another pair of Jack Joggers, this time for husband.
I actually sewed these joggers, kind of, a year ago. I mean, I did sew them and Alex did wear them occasionally, but the fit was abysmal, I botched the rapids for the waist string and they fell off, leaving holes in the waistband and the cuffs were made out of some large stitch rib knit I had bought in my then ignorance about knits, which stretched awfully.
So, I decided that there was no point in keeping these poor joggers as they were - I had either to fix them or send them off to the recycle bin. (We don't have Goodwill shops here, but I regularly collect and deliver bags of discarded clothes to H&M for recycling, very convenient. )
Well, me being me, I couldn't give up without a fight, more so that now I thought I knew how to fix the problems. I undid all of the seams except for the outer side seams (at least I didn't have to attach the pockets again).
The problem with the fit was that the joggers were very baggy, especially from behind. So, I figured it was the central back line, which was way too long. I shortened it by 5 cm at the crotch and I also shortened the whole rise by additional 2 cm at the waist line.
Then I added a new tighter waist band, no rapids and strings as per Alex's explicit desire, and new tighter ankle cuffs out of black rib knit.
And now Alex has a pair of joggers for winter, that actually fit him really well. The fabric turned out not to be of the highest quality, unfortunately, and it already shows signs of pilling, but with these French Terries I've been buying lately it is always a hit and miss, regardless of the price :( I'll have to learn to recognize better quality eventually.
Finally my husband got the extra warm joggers he was asking for, and he is super happy with the fabric and the fit. And so am I!
The pattern is Burda 6719 and this is the second time I'm using it. The first was a pair of joggers for our son, which I made last year. They came our fine initially, but the fabric relaxed and made them very baggy, especially from behind.
Having in mind the issues I had with the first make, I reduced the depth
of the seat significantly and also took in a bit of the width and they
came out pretty slimming, which my husband really liked. I also added some 4 cm length to the legs, as I thought they were on the short side, but I was wrong there and I might shorten them sometime (probably never :).
Here's the pair of lounge pants I made for my son at the beginning of the month. These have been worn and washed twice and are holding pretty well. The fabric is cotton knit, very easy to work with.
