Thursday, December 15, 2011

Not Really A Tutorial...

My middle son asked for THIS for Christmas - a Venom, full zip, hoodie. It was only made in men's sizes, as far as we can tell, and it's been out of stock for years, as far as we can tell - but he saw it on someone and that was that. I told him we could not find one. The face crumpled.

and then I said it.

"Well, we could try to make one..."

oh boy.

So. I used McCalls pattern 6158 (don't tell him it's a girl pattern) because it has the thumb hole that the other sweater has. Anti-pill fleece was on sale, so I used that.

First, I made the template for the Spider front.


I laid it on the fold of the white fleece and cut it, then cut the fleece in half on the fold. Then I pinned it to the front of the sweater, leaving a little room for the seam.

I drew a shape for the mouth and cut out the tongue, then the little bitty annoying teeth.

I sewed those on to the lower part of the hood.

I had to fudge the instructions just a little - the hood is supposed to go on after the zipper but since this is a full-zip hoodie the zipper needed to go on later.
I also cut out eye holes and sewed a thick tulle in their place.

The instructions said to sew the zipper on to the front, right sides together. It was later turned to the inside, and a facing applied to the other side. The fleece was bulky for that - I would use a different fabric if I were to do this again (which, I won't).

You can see I managed to make the mouth uneven. Am I going to fix it, you ask?

hahahaha.

funny.

I DID have to add about 4 inches of width to the center back of the hood, narrowing at forehead and neck, so it would wrap around his face without suffocating him.

After sewing on the waistband and cuffs, the last step was to sew the spider leg shapes into the white front.
Ta Da! It's definitely not perfect, and I used the longest zipper I could find that was open on both ends - without using a 36 incher, you know. The zipper was still a couple of inches short and the zip ends right as the waistband starts. So it's open at the bottom.

Still, I'm fairly certain he's going to love it.

.....he'd better.

Update - he loves it. Success. :)

2 comments:

Nanette said...

WOW!
You put Santa's elves to shame! (not to mention a few of us mothers)
You rock!

Maxine Parrish said...

You know you're nuts, right? I mean, certifiably, wholly insane? Also, that looks AWESOME!