Knock it Off - Petite à Petit and family /Let's Do Sew

Ready for some knock-off cuteness?  Celina Bailey from Petit à Petit & family and Let's Do Sew is here to share this adorable hoodie that would be perfect for any little boy or girl.  If you admire her work as much as I do, make sure to check out her clothing line available at Mini Bulles.  And did I mention she lives in Canada, so we are practically neighbours (well, not really, but she's only one province away!)?  I know how busy she must be as a full-time working mom of two beautiful children, so it is a great honour to have her here at E&E sharing her outstanding skills!

Hello everyone! I'm Celina and I blog over at Petite à Petit and family and very recently I started a sewing blog, Let's Do Sew. I used to sew and have my own little kids label, until recently, now I work a full time job, I blog and sew for my kids in my spare time. I am so excited to be part of this sewing series, it's always fun and challenging trying to reproduce an item of clothing you just can't afford or just doesn't come in the right size. There are so many inspiring labels and images on the internet, that I had a hard time narrowing down just what I wanted to do, it doesn't help that I'm terribly addicted to Pinterest and the amount of cool stuff on that site is endless. Finally, when this image of the bear hoodie from Oysho popped up on Pinterest, a couple of weeks ago, I knew I had found my knock off project.  

So I got inspired by the Oysho Ladies lounge wear Bear Hoodie...

and made a cute and comfy hoodie for my daughter... I also made my son a bear sweatshirt from the same company which you can see here on my sewing blog. I can never make one something without the other wanting their version too. 

So today I've prepared a little tutorial, so your kids (or you) can enjoy a cute bear hoodie as well. I won't be providing any patterns for the hoodie itself, but I've prepared everything for the appliqué face, paws and ears.

The first thing I did was draft a pattern from an existing hoodie, I traced the front, back, sleeves and hood. Then I grabbed my front bodice pattern and figured out the proportions for my appliqué face & bear paws (1st two photos above). I created 2 PDF files for you to print with the patterns of the the bear face, paws and ears which you can find HERE & HERE.
This is what these files look like:

- Print out the pages and cut out the patterns.

- Now grab the biggest piece entitled "Bear Face" ( it's on a fold, you might want to cut the pattern out as a whole) and place it on your front bodice in the center and about 3cm from the lower hem. Now you want to add notches to your front bodice, as I did in the first photo above. This will help you position your pieces later.

- Do the same with the paw pattern, position it on your sleeve pattern and add a notch to your pattern to determine where you would like the paw to be sewn on.  Your paw should be approximately in the middle of you sleeve pattern taking a the cuff, if you have one into account.

- Now we need to modify our hood pattern. I added 4cm to the width of my hood.  Depending on the pattern you are using, you might have to add or subtract, however it's better to have more than not enough!

Now your pattern pieces are ready. Let's cut out our fabric. I used some french terry I had for the hoodie, then I used white sweatshirt material for the face and inner ears, pink sweatshirt for the cheeks and brown leather for the nose and paws (you can do this in brown felt or sweatshirt material too!). 

Now we are ready to sew. I started with the face.

STEP 1: align your face pattern with the notches (see the pink circle) in your front bodice & pin in place & sew all around at 2-3mm from the edge.

STEP 2: Pin your cheeks in place & sew all around at 2-3mm from the edge. For the nose, since I used leather I used a glue stick to hold my piece in place and then sewed all around at 2mm from the edge. If you re using fabric or felt, simply pin your pieces in place.

STEP 3: I traced my eyes with a pencil as a guide line.

STEP 4: With an embroidery needle and some brown embroidery thread I embroidered the eyes with a stem stitch. You could just use a fabric pen and draw the eye in too. 

STEP 1:  I followed my notch for the placement of the paws on my sleeve. I glued the pieces onto the fabric with a basic glue stick to keep them in place. If you use fabric or felt, then I suggest you pin them in place. Then, I sewed all around at 2mm from the edge.

STEP 2: I stitched the inner ears to one layer of my outer ears at 3mm from the raw edge. Then I sewed both outer ears together at 1cm and then trimmed off 0.5cm for perfect raw edges.  

Optional** I fused one of my outer ears for a little more stiffness.

STEP 3: For some added shape, I then folded my ears in two and topstitched for about 2cm.

Sewing the ears to the hood is the trickiest part, probably because of the technique I used! Using some bias could have been a lot more simpler. Oh well It's too late now!

STEP 1: Sew your hood together first. Then place your ears were your notches are at 4cm from the edge and about 6cm from your center seam ( therefore the ears will be 12cm apart). Fold your fabric (4cm) over, good side to good side, therefore you can now see the wrong side of the fabric. PIN all a long. 

STEP 2: Sew at 0.5cm from the edge of your fold.

STEP 3: Open up your seam and turn your fabric over. You can iron the seam down if you like.

STEP 4: Fold the edge of your fabric over by 0.5cm. 

STEP 5: Fold that over by 1cm and pin down. It's sort of like sewing on some bias. 

STEP 6: Turn you fabric over and sew inside the groove of your first seam. 

Wow! We did it! Please, if anything is unclear and you need more assistance let me know, I'll gladly help anyone out. I'm new at this tutorial business and still have a lot to learn and refine. 

There you have it! The real and the knock-off.  I left out the drawstring for security reasons. I added some cuffs to the sleeves, so I can turn the sleeves over and so my daughter can grow into it. I also added a cuffed hem simply because I like the look better and It's so much easier to sew then to do an actual hem! 

You could totally add this cute little bear face, paws and ears to any hoodie you already have, by following the same steps, when you get to the ears, you could just topstitch them about 3cm from the edge.

Thank you so much for having me be part of this series Heidi, my daughter is over the moon with her new hoodie and she has you to thank.