Puperita Hearts Hoodie

Where do you stand on sewing for other people? I'm quite a fan of it, but I am selective and only sew for people who I know will appreciate the effort that's gone into it. Or in this case, a person who is still a bit young to grasp the concept of sewing but whose parents will appreciate the effort. This is a little jacket that I made for my nephew's birthday present a couple of weeks ago.

The pattern is the Hearts hoodie from Puperita - a hooded jacket, with a fairly relaxed fit (relaxed enough that one can easily play football in it, as demonstrated below - he's just kicked a ball, it's not the start of a weird new dance craze!), designed to finish just above the knee. The description claims that it's the easiest coat or jacket pattern you'll find, and I have to say I'd probably agree with that.

I've actually made the jacket for him already (unblogged) when he was much younger and I remember being surprised at how quickly it came together, so I was more than happy to make another now that he's grown. I cut the jacket out one evening and easily did all the sewing, minus the buttonholes and buttons, the next evening so you can see that it isn't a complicated pattern.

The instructions are thorough and well illustrated with photographs. There was one point where I remember that I found the written instructions a bit confusing the first time around, but the photos cleared up what I was meant to be doing.

There are nine sizes ranging from newborn to five years, and as my nephew's still only 2 I can see that I might be making another one or two of these over the coming years. I'll definitely be getting my money's worth out of the pattern.

I considered a whole range of different fabric combinations, but in the end decided to use some royal blue polar fleece from Tia Knight for the outer fabric, and a fun tractor print cotton (my nephew's a big fan of tractors!) from Fabrics Galore for the lining. The buttons came from a local wool shop and are a really good match for the red of the tractors.

As the background of the lining is white, the blue of the fleece would have showed through slightly and dulled the colour, so I decided to underline it. As a happy coincidence, my Dad was getting rid of some shirts around the time that I was planning this project, and one of them was a really nice quality white one which was a bit worn on the collar but fine elsewhere, so that was cut up to use as underlining.

I'm really happy with how the jacket turned out. While my nephew may not necessarily understand the sewing, he definitely liked the tractors and wanted to try the jacket on straightaway. And my sister has already been stopped in town by someone who wanted to know where she bought the jacket, so I'm counting that as a success! I suppose that (scarily!) it won't be long until I need to start thinking about sewing Christmas presents - will you be making any gifts this year?