"Adventure Time" Hood Pattern

This post contains free patterns. That's always fun. :)

This is a very simple project and should take no more than 2 hrs to make. It's ripe for alteration so if you make a variation please please please! Share! I'd love to see a unicorn hood. I truly would. :)

My youngest son is a hoot. His sense of humor is a bit off... The apple doesn't fall far from the tree I guess.

Adventure Time is a huge favorite... So Finn the Human was his choice for Halloween this year.

This is meant to fit a fidgety 15 year old. This pattern though includes a shorten/lengthen line, and instructions on how and where to measure the wearers face to get the hood to fit . If you want this to fit a size 8 kid remove the 1/2 seam allowance along center back. For every size smaller remove and additional 1/4". So for a size 4 kid remove 1".

I'm not going to give sewing instruction other than these four tips:
1. When cutting out 4 layers of polar fleece, don't pin, draw the pattern on the fabric and cut. You'll get a more accurate cut.
2. Fleece is sucky to sew. To make it better set the PSI on the pressure foot very low. You'll have to pull the fabric through the machine a bit. You can also use a walking foot or one of those specialty feet with wheels.
3. To set the ears accurately, sew one side of the dart, (your essentially marking the dart) and sew the preassembled ear to that side matching up sew lines. Then finish the dart. Sewing one side of the dart also acts as stay stitching, and makes a stable base to apply the ear.
4. I didn't mark it on the pattern, but leave a 2" gap open in the linings center back seam so you can turn the hood right side out.


The pattern was made by Amanda Lerum. She is very handy at making sewing patterns, in fact she makes patterns to sell on Etsy, you can also visit her facebook.

One other thing... There are 2 patterns, one with a chin strap, and one with ties. This is because my son couldn't decide what he likes best. Pitty me. And yet like the sucker I am, I made 2. :)

The pattern with the chin strap measures 10" from center seam down the middle of the face to the top of the chin strap. If you measure down the wearers face from the hairline, down the nose to under the chin, you will see how much you will need to shorten or lengthen the pattern.

Oh! you'll need to add a dart in the ear... mine are 1/2". You cut four of everything. The hood itself is self lined, or you can use different fabric to line it. Fancy!

Apron Pattern and Tutorial Part 1

As a Christmas gift for my family and friends, I made aprons to give out at a Christmas baking party that I had at my home. I thought it might also be nice to give a tutorial and a free pattern for the apron to my blog followers. They are super easy to construct and make quick and cute gifts. 

With all my heart I hope that your Christmas holiday is filled with joy and happiness, and that next year will be prosperous. Merry Christmas! :)

To make this apron you will need:

1 1/4 yards of 45' novelty cotton print or quilting cotton print.

If you want your waistband tie to be the wider width you will need the 1 1/2 yards.

The above picture shows the apron's cutting layout. The only time you'll need scissors to cut in this project is for the apron bib... the pattern for it is below... all of the straps, ruffles and skirt are torn on the straight of grain across the bolt, from salvage to salvage. It's important to ask the store to tear your fabric or to give you and extra 3 inches or so, because as you can see in my layout picture this fabric wasn't torn on the grain from the bolt, and because of that I'm missing 2" or so at the top right. I should have been able to get 4 half straps and 3 full straps from 1 1/4 yards of fabric

Cut List:

2 apron bibs... either Arch or Heart shaped

4 half straps... 2 of these are for the neck strap and 2 will be used for the bib ruffle. These are torn 3" wide across the bolt from salvage to the bib

3 full bolt width straps... 2 of these are for the waistband tie and 1 is for the bib ruffle. These are torn 3" wide across the bolt from salvage to salvage.  If you want to have the wider waistband tie, tear the 2 waistband ties at 4.5"

1 skirt... You don't really have to tear this out. Whatever is the remaining fabric will be your skirt.

 

I think the heart shaped bib front looks shorter than the Arch... they should be the same length. (I've no idea how that happened.)

 Next entry will be all the steps of construction! I am now headed to my 3rd Christmas Party!

Early Victorian

This post contains a free pattern!! very exciting. :)

So... Early Victorian.... in my mind this spans the time when the young queen took over, and some smarty pants figured out that if you put steel wire in a corded petticoat instead of rope, chicks would dig it. So 1840 ish to 1850 ish. :)

If any paragraph that I have written would clue you in that I'm NOT a reenactor but am a costumer... I'm not sure I could write a more blasphemous one. :) for reals.


But this is actually really accurate. Hand to god. I swear. During this time period... Early Victorian. women liked big skirts... :) but it was hard to get skirts super big. So methods were devised. I guess this started with the romantic era 1825-1830 ish?... but corded petticoats (if not heavy and hot) solved the bigger skirt problem, a little bit. Corded petticoats and heavily starched petticoats (heavily starched in so heavy a starch that the skirts could stand on their own) used together would hold a skirt out pretty well. I didn't mention petticoats made of horsehair or crin... crin is french for hair??... and yes, that would be a crinoline. :) (dropping knowledge like a bomb)


I'm not sure when this particular pattern was published... I'm assuming sometime late in this era. But this corded petticoat calls for 3 rows of reed. Yah... reed, that grows... in like a river... and you can make wicker chairs out of it. Yah. REED.


So this corded petticoat is super BIG. and for the most part is strong, and can support a heavy starched petticoat, and dress.

Did you know... I wrote this post super long ago, and was going to edit it, and add something. I don't remember what it was... I think a tutorial on double piping. Well, it's been too long and if I haven't written that tutorial yet, I might as well post this without it. At least the pattern is there. :)

A Strawberry Recticule

This post is for a friend of mine that requested this pattern. It's not historically accurate, it's just freaking cute. There are historical hand bags shaped like fruit though, but this pattern is of my own design and uses modern patterning and sewing techniques.

to make this little bag you will need:
14" x the bolt length of red or pink silk taffeta.
20" x the bolt length of green silk taffeta.
black seed beads
a cord for the draw string
36" of ribbon for handles... I used my green silk to back my trim... just to make it stronger
perhaps a tassel to finish off the bottom of the bag.

this is the finished bag:

 

The only "tutorial" I'm going to give for this project is to remind you about gussets... the construction isn't difficult but it's important if you want a clean finished project is to START and STOP sewing on the X's... otherwise the bag just won't go together well...

I didn't mark 5 things on the pattern...

1. The center line... it runs down the center of the bag pattern piece from tip to tip
2. the placement of the straps... they go inside the bag at the center line about 1/2 underneath drawstring casing.
3. the placement of the eyelet holes for the drawstring... you will place 1 eyelet hole 1/4" on either side of the center line, in the center of the drawstring casing
4. The fact that the lining and the outside fabric DON'T MATCH UP!! They are offset by half... match the edge of the outside fabric to the center line of the lining... you can see this in the picture above.
5. The placement for the seed beads are marked with X's on the pattern.

and without further ado... Here's the pattern! :D

again just like the last pattern... it's in inches... 1 inch squared.

Regency Drawn Bonnet... Pattern and Tutorial

Sorry that's its taken me so long to start this tutorial. Better late than never I guess. :)

I'm not the best at photoshop, sorry if the pattern is blotchy. I simply scanned my pellon pattern multiple times and saved them as one big image. The pellon is printed with 1x1 squares. (no idea what that means in metric!) You can either print it on a transparency and scale it up that way, or if your good, print it out and tape it together with your printer, or you can do the tried and true, "draw by grid" like we learned in school. :)

This is my pattern:

To make this bonnet you will need:

finely woven linen about 3/4 of a yard
a remnant of silk organza, or fine cotton organdy about 15 x 15 inches square
a hank of peaches and creme crochet cotton
a bodkin, tapestry needle or upholstery needle, or a long piece of craft wire 24" folded in half. (this is the tool you will need to pull the crochet cotton cording through it's channels.
a 1/8" rolled hem foot... you can of course do this by hand.

I don't include a pattern piece for the tie. So in explanation, the tie is a 4" wide length of linen fabric, 80" long... it's two 40 1/2" pieces with a seam at the center back (1/2" seam allow). The center front edges have been turned under in such a way that the edge is pointed.

Where the bonnet is attached to the hat... 9 1/4 on either side of the C.B seam (18 1/2" total) the tie is folded in half with a 1/2 seam allowance attaching the tie to the hat. The total width of the tie will be 1.5". The remaining length of fabric 21 1/2" will have it's raw edges finished with an 1/8 rolled hem foot. You should over lap the rolled hem into the area that is attached to the hat.

I'm going to leave off there.... time to pick the kiddo up from school! This is enough to get you started though. Those of you who've made projects like this before don't need the rest and those that haven't can at least get everything cut out before our next installment... hopefully tomorrow! :)