Once Upon a Thread: Little Blue and Little Yellow (plus how to draft a hood!)

Katy of No Big Dill is once again running her Once Upon A Thread challenge, in which she asks readers and contributors to seek sewing inspiration from children's literature. The posts have been, as expected, super cute and inspiring — though I'm growing less and less apt to make anything for a fickle three-year-old (even dinner: every night this kid says, "I don't like that!" It's torture, I tell you. Last night I made Mark Bittman's Chicken Cobbler, which is basically chicken pot pie topped with biscuits. Can you imagine anything better than that? My daughter can: pizza. )

 

Anyway, back to the challenge: I decided to stick with something simple, and made Lucy this white fleece hooded romper with pockets and "Little Blue and Little Yellow" appliqued on the chest. I drafted the pattern myself, and used only fabrics I had in my stash. Though it turned out well, in the end the applique looks a little too much like the Mastercard logo, and not enough like the cute and cleverly illustrated book (by Leo Lionni) that inspired it:

 

 
If you aren't familiar with the story, it's basically thus: Little Blue and Little Yellow are best buds. One day they hug each other too hard, and become a big green blob. Then they run off and have lots of fun and adventure. But when they come home their parents don't recognize them! So they cry:

Then they gather themselves up and are again Little Blue and Little Yellow. Their parents are so happy to see them:

Cute, right? The matching leggings I made using the "Sleeping Johns" pattern from the book Growing Up Sew Liberated, which I won in a Burdastyle.com giveaway. I made them this week, inspired by Debi's Sew Grateful challenge: to make something from something you won this year. The Sleeping Johns pattern was perfectly simple, and turned out really well. I also liked it because there is only one pattern piece. I added a couple inches of length to the 3T size because my daughter is tall for her age. I will definitely be using this pattern again. (Another pattern I have used from this book is the Baby Sleepsack, which I sewed for a six-month-old's Halloween costume. It's not the easiest sleepsack to get your infant into — when my kid was small, we favoured ones with snaps or a zipper up the middle for easy in-and-out. But it's really no harder than a T-shirt to slip on.) The full-length Little Blue and Little Yellow look:

 And my gift to you after the jump: how to draft a hood pattern to add to any simple garment with a normal neckhole!
Though I've been studying patternmaking at FIT in NYC, and truly love drafting from scratch, in patternmaking as in life, I do enjoy a shortcut — especially when sewing for ungrateful children. To that end, if you want to add a hood to a simple garment (say a long-sleeve-T-shirt pattern, or a romper, like I have done here) I recommend first finding a hoodie in your closet (or your kid's, as the case may be) that fits your head properly. Working from a garment that already works for you takes, like, 14 steps out of the process.  


1. The first thing you need to do is measure your front and back neck. I like to mark these measurements on my patterns when I'm drafting them. That way if I go back and add a hood (or sleeves, etc) the measurement is already there. I just use a straight ruler, and turn it carefully along the curve. You may have one of those bendy rulers on hand. Go ahead and use it (my teachers at FIT, for some reason, poo-pooed those things).

My kid's front and back neck measurements, marked on the front and back pattern pieces

2. Many hoods have a single seam down the middle of the hood. That's the easiest kind to copy and sew. Fold it in half so that the front edges touch. Then pin it in place on your pattern paper, and trace around it with a pencil. Don't worry if it's not perfect. Trace along the bottom edge of the hood as best as you can. I just made a few marks along the bottom edge, which I will then connect with my French curve:

3. Grab your French curve and use it to smooth out the pattern you have traced off. First, the seam:

Then turn it and draw that curve along the top of the hood:

Then draw the neck curve, matching up the point you made when tracing the hood:

4. Now go back to your front and back neck measurements that you took on your main pattern pieces. First, plot the back neck measurement along that neck curve. Mine was 4 inches. So as you can see, I used my ruler to find the 4-inch point to the left of the seam. Then make a mark. This will be the shoulder notch on your pattern, and will help you get it all lined up properly when you are stitching it together:

5. Now take your ruler and plot the front neck measurement along that curve, starting at the shoulder notch you already made. Mine was 3 1/2 inches, and as you can see in the photo here, my center front point is beyond the hood I traced. That's OK. We are going to reshape the part of the hood that curves around the face.

6. Extend the neckhole as needed so that your hood is big enough to meet in the middle at center front. You may want to extend 3/4 inch BEYOND the center front point, which would create a nice overlap in the middle. Then use your French curve to shape the front edge of the hood, matching up that center front point with the edge you traced off from your original hood:

7. Don't forget to draw a grain line. I also like to make a notch at the mid-point on the seam that goes over your head. That makes it easier to match it up properly when you're sewing. Label your pattern, and note that you need to cut 2 from your main (self) fabric. Label anything else you need to help you in sewing (I marked "front" just so I wouldn't get confused about what edge is the neckhole, for eg):

8.
Add seam allowances. You may have your own preference for how much. Many commercial patterns include 5/8-inch, which I think is too much. In my patternmaking classes at FIT, we have to add 1/2-inch, unless it's a neckhole, and then it's 3/8 inch (this is to prevent bulk in the seams. I think it's also industry standard). I use my clear plastic ruler to add my seam allowances:

 

Then cut out your pattern and you're ready to sew! If you're comfortable enough to draft a hood pattern, I'm assuming you can sew it too. I won't walk you thru it, but the basics are:

-sew up the seam at center back

-finish the edge that goes around the face. I used a strip of blue jersey to finish my edge. You could simply turn under and stitch

-sew to your neckhole, matching up the shoulder notches with the shoulder seams on your garment

Done! Stay warm this Thanksgiving!