I discovered Mary Frances work during one of the first KCWCs. She spent the week making outfits inspired by illustrations in children’s books–the frog and toad trousers were so stylish I wanted some for myself! For this pre-kcwc party week, Mary Frances has written a fantastic tutorial for hoods. You can add a hood to an existing shirt or a pattern you are working on, she has directions for both.  Plus she’s put a bit of elastic in the hood to help it stay on which I think is absolutely genius! 

Hello elsie marley readers!  I was so excited when Meg asked me to guest post about clothing details that I quickly signed up for pants closures… then spent half that night lying awake, gripped by visions of HOODS and the finer points of their construction.  Luckily Meg is one who understands late night visits from the (pushy, pushy) sewing muses and she tolerated–nay, encouraged!–my change of heart.

But really, who could blame me?  Hoods are a fun and easy detail to add to any shirt or jacket.  They provide the functionality of convenient warmth (no more losing track of hats) and the fashion bonus of being particularly cute on kids.  They are great for boys’ or girls’ clothes, evoking the fly-behind feeling of a superhero’s cape as easily as the fairytale mood of Little Red or a princess-in-the-woods.

Hoods provide a surprising number of opportunities for personalization and creativity.  The tutorial below is for a pretty basic lined hood, but you could use the same techniques to come up with many different variations:

–Experiment with shape–this pointy one (via Meg’s pins) makes me swoon.
–Add cat/dog/bear ears or dinosaur fins for a Halloween (or any day!) costume.
–Play with different kinds of gaps and overlaps at the neck, like these from Trula.
–Use the liner to showcase a special or wild fabric that might be a little much for a full garment: I like this one by Heidi of mypapercrane.
–Add embellishments like decorative topstitching, edge lace, fancy drawstrings, or piping.
–Once you have mastered the two-panel hood, experiment with three-panel construction–these are more common on heavy garments like rain jackets and offer yet another fabric “zone” to play with; the jacket in Anna Maria Horner’s Handmade Beginnings is a great example.

Ready to add a hood?  Here’s the higly official

Gather Your Materials

You will need:
–The shirt you’ll put the hood onto. I used a hand-me-down storebought shirt, but you could also modify a pattern to include a hood. Just make the shirt/jacket/cardigan up to the point of attaching the collar, and make and attach a hood instead.
–1/3 yard outer fabric
–1/3 lining fabric
(I used an old knit shirt for the outer and an old sweater for the lining.  You can use any fabrics that you think will complement and sew nicely onto the base shirt.)
–3 inches of 1/4″ elastic (optional)
–paper and pencil for tracing the pattern
–pins, scissors, thread, measuring tape and whatever other sewing gadgets you like to use

Make Your Pattern

1.  You can use a hoodie you already have to get the general shape.  Fold your hoodie in half longwise, lay it on your pattern paper (I use freezer paper so I can iron the pattern on at the cutting stage) and then trace the hood with a pencil.
2.  After you trace the hood (or maybe you just winged it and drew a hood-like shape; that’s OK too), you’ll need to check your dimensions and adjust slightly:
–With a flexible measuring tape, first measure from the top of your child’s head down to the base of their neck.  Add 1 to 2 inches to this number (1″ will be a more closely fitting hood, 2″ will be looser; err on the long side if you are planning to cut an exisiting collar away from a shirt) and adjust the height of your hood pattern to match.
–Now measure the circumference of the collar of the shirt you’ve chosen.  If you’re going to cut off a pre-existing collar (see below), be sure to measure below it at the cutting point (the measurement will be slightly larger than the top-of-collar circumference).  Take half of that measurement and adjust the width of your hood pattern: a larger width will mean your hood overlaps at the front, a smaller width will leave a gap at the neck.

3. Add 1/2″ seam allowance all the way around the new pattern.
4. Cut your pattern out!

Cut Out Your Hood Pieces

1.  Fold your outer fabric in half such that the hood pattern will fit onto it.
2.  Lay the hood pattern on top (not directly along a fold), pin or iron in place, and cut through both layers of fabric (cutting the two sides at once helps keep you from making the unfortunate mistake of forgetting to reverse the pattern piece on one-sided fabrics).
3.  Repeat for lining fabric.
4.  You will have 4 identically-shaped hood pieces: 2 outer and 2 liner.

Sew the Hood

1. Take your two outer pieces and, with right sides together, pin along the curved side of the hood (you are making the main seam that goes from the top of the head all the way down the back).
2.  Stitch a 1/2″ seam, backstitching at beginning and end and removing pins as you go.
3.  Repeat steps 1-2 for liner fabric.

4.  For outer and liner, trim seam to 1/4″ and clip notches along the curve.
5.  Press seams open.

6.  With right sides together, slide outer hood into hood liner; match center seams and pin together along “face edge” of hood.

7.  Stitch a 1/2″ seam along the edge you have just pinned, backstitching at beginning and end and removing pins as you go.

(**Steps 8-10 are optional and a little fussy, but I think they really help the hood stay on the head!**)
8.  Take your 3″ piece of elastic and mark the center.

9.  Spread the outer and liner of the hood open (I found this easiest to do over my knee) and pin the center of the elastic to the center seam of the liner fabric only.  You want to position the elastic as close to the edge seam as possible (without crossing into the seam allowance)–you are going to enclose it within the topstitching.

10.  Using a zigzag stitch, stretch and attach the elastic to the hood liner.  I pull the first part of the elastic out about 2″ extra (or as far as it will go) and use my presser foot to catch it, then use my hands to stretch the elastic as I stitch.  Make sure you are only stretching the elastic, not the fabric itself.

11. Turn the hood right side out and press.
12.  Pin along the face edge again, making sure to match center seams.  This is so the two layers won’t slip around while you are topstitching.

13.  Topstitch along the face edge about 1/2 to 5/8″ in. from the edge.  If you used elastic, sew carefully along that area, using your hands to keep the liner flat as you go (don’t stretch the hood fabric itself).

Attach the Hood to the Shirt

1.  If you are using a premade shirt, you will probably want to remove the existing collar.  Cut it away from the shirt closely and carefully.
2.  Fold your shirt in half longways and mark the center front and back of the raw collar.  Use these points to guide you as you pin the hood to the shirt, right sides and raw edges together. Make sure the overlap or gap at the front lines up the way you want it to.  (I pinned with the shirt inside out, so the hood is inside the shirt in this picture.  It would have been easier, however, to turn the shirt right side out.  I ended up doing that anyway before I sewed.)

3.  Stich all the way around the hood to attach it to the collar.
4.  Turn the shirt right side out and check to make sure the hood looks ok!  Then turn it inside out again.
5.  To finish the inside, trim seam neatly and press toward bottom of shirt.  Topstitch all the way around the collar within the seam allowance, catching the gap fabric (if you have a gap) to hem it as you go.  (If you are the fancy type, you could also use twill tape or a serger to finish the seam.)
6.  Admire your new hooded garment!  I mean, your kid’s.  Unless you cheated on kcwc and used this tutorial to make a hoodie for yourself, which would work, but would be highly, highly unethical.  So don’t even think about it.

Mary Frances blogs bits of craft and life at this is marzipan.  Come say hello!

Next week is the kids clothes week challenge! Have you signed up? Do you have a plan? Are you making piles of fabric? My list consists mostly of pants, coats, and some shirts. Not particularly exciting, but it’s what my kids need.

This week I wanted to have a slew of tutorials to get everyone excited to sew next week. There are so many good tutorials out there for simple pants and shirts already. Like these–

1. simple pants pattern
2. basic coat pattern
3. ringer shirt tutorial
4. hoodie to pullover refashion
5. kimono pattern
6. raglan shirt pattern

So instead of patterns and tutorials for pants or tops, I’ve asked some super fantastic children’s clothes makers (and bloggers) to come up with tutorials for details you can add to basic pieces: patches, hoods, pintucks.  Sounds awesome, right? This week will be like the pre-game party for kcwc!

I’m going to kick it off with a little detail tutorial of my own: the bunting tag tutorial. I try to remember to put tags in all the clothes I make, because if I don’t my son will inevitably wear his pants backwards. The elsie marley tag I have is gray–nice and subtle, but not very noticeable to a four year old. So I’ve had to come up with other, more visible tags to use. Bunting, banners, triangles on strings, whatever you call them they are everywhere, so I figured why not put them in your pants?

the bunting tag tutorial

Materials

• bias tape–double fold, single fold, it doesn’t matter just use what you have
• pins
• scissors
• iron
• an article of clothing to put your tags in

Directions

1.  Cut five 2 inch pieces of bias tape. You can use all the same color or different colors, whatever you like. Oh yeah, that is some metallic gold bias tape up there!

2.  Open up one side of the bias tape and iron it flat. Then fold up the folded side to make a triangle–see above photo. 

3.  Turn the triangle over so the fold is in the back. Line them up in the order you like.

4.  Check to see if the triangles are evenly spaced by placing a piece of paper over the raw edges (the bit of cardboard that comes with bias tape works well for this).  This also lets you see what the tag will look like when it’s sewn into your clothes–the triangles overlapping no longer shows and it looks more like a proper bunting.

5.  Pin the triangles and sew or bast them together.  Trim the raw edges to about 1/4 inch.

6. Insert the bunting where you would normally put a tag (the back, duh) and sew that sucker in. Ta Da! A bunting in your pants!  Now your kids won’t put their clothes on backwards and while you are folding the laundry you’ll smile a little when you see these little tags .

I have been dreaming about crocheting the kids some afghans for a while now (like this one and this one or this one). I knew I should have started in the summertime, but the thought of a big pile of yarn on my lap when it was 100 degrees out just made me gag. It’s cold and of course they need a warm blanket and now I want to make one, but at this point it will be done for next fall. Dammit. Old lady thrift store to the rescue!

Seriously, those old ladies are the bomb. It’s the only thrift store in town that hasn’t been hipsterfied. Things are a little smelly and odd, but they all are priced like second hand goods, not like it’s oooo vintage. This super amazing rainbow afghan was three bucks! But (big but) none of the end were woven in. Do you see all those color changes?!

How could I pass it up? I had been looking at this exact pattern to use for an afghan, because of this beautiful specimen. So last night, I happily sat on the couch with the afghan warm from the dryer and wove those 200 ends in. It’s like the satisfaction of finishing a huge project without having to actually do the huge project.  Thank you whoever made this gorgeous afghan and abandoned it almost done!

p.s. see that little bit of a map up there? the room is (still) slowly coming together–might even get done.

A little friend of ours turned 3 last week. I had the damnest time coming up with something to make for him. He’s got a super crafty mama, so that lucky boy is kitted out with capes and bags and awesome appliqued shirts. And all the other things you would make for little boys.

I figured the dress up box could always use a few more things, so I sewed up these felt masks. I started with a mask template I made from a paper plate and then went crazy with a bag of felt scraps.  There was a lot of white, gray, and orange felt in the bag, so out came a cat, an elephant, and an owl.

I had the best time making the elephant. His ears are extra wonky and homemade, but I’m so in love with his pompom headpiece I don’t care. It was sort of a last minute addition too. If I had thought of it earlier I would have dressed him up more!

Mostly I made up the patterns as I went along except I did steal the owl mask idea from Martha (she’s got so many ideas, she won’t notice). These were so fun to make and halloween is coming up so fast, I might have to make some more.  I might even go crazy and write up a tutorial. But which one? Or should I make something else?