Fruity Drew
Sometimes you fall in love with a fabric but have no idea what to make with it. Other times, it screams to be used for a specific pattern. The latter is exactly what happened when I stumbled across this French Terry with adorable fruit print on it while fabric shopping with Mom a few months ago. We went to the Saturday fabric market in Utrecht and strolled past this stall filled with cute coupons. This fruity number immediately stood out to me and I just knew it would be perfect for a Drew Sweatshirt by Tilly and the Buttons, a raglan sleeved, loose fitting sweatshirt. There were other incredibly adorable pieces of fabric too. In the end, I decided on this one as it was love at first sight. At the same stand, there was a basket with pieces of ribbing. I searched through it and was able to find a few pieces that matched the colors on my coupon perfectly. Though this purchase wasn’t on my shopping list, I was thrilled with it and excited to get started on it soon.
When prepping for the project, everything was still fine. I prewashed the fabric and printed and assembled the pattern. When it was finally time to cut out the fabric, I noticed, to my horror, that the fabric piece was too small to fit everything on it. When shopping, I checked and thought it would be enough for this project. How naive… I thought the coupon was about 1.5m, but it only turned out to be about 1m. Note to self: don’t estimate fabric measurements, it’s not my strong suit. One lucky thing about the pattern I wanted to use, was that it came with 2 different sleeve options. Option 1 is a solid sleeve, where option 2 is a color blocked sleeve made up of 4 different pieces. I was able to fit one of those sleeve pieces on the fabric, so with some plain French Terry, I could still get the result I was hoping for! After some fabric tetris I was able to fit everything on the fabric as needed. The ribbing was only just enough. I did not intend to make the cuffs 2 different colors, because I had bought 3 pieces of ribbing, each a different color. However, the ribbing I wanted to use for the cuffs didn’t match perfectly after all, so I tried to fit these cuff pieces on the other 2 ribbing pieces. With hardly anything to spare, it worked out and I had all my fabric pieces.
The sewing of this sweatshirt was not as eventful as the buildup. It is a simple pattern to follow and everything can be sewn on the overlocker, which is convenient and speedy. I have made this sweatshirt before twice, so I was already familiar with the process. However, I think this is a beginner friendly pattern, a good project for a confidence booster on the overlocker, and can also be sewn with a zigzag stitch on a regular sewing machine. I sewed a size 3. My measurements put me between size 3 and 4. My previous versions were made in size 4, but they were slightly too baggy for my liking, so I decided to size down. The pattern comes with 2 lengths: cropped in the waist and full length hitting at the hips. For my taste, the cropped length is too short but the full length is too long, so I went somewhere in between. I achieved this by cutting the full length version and shortening it by about 4cm. The entire sewing process took me 3 hours.
I absolutely love how it turned out! The result is not what I pictured when purchasing the fabric, but I think I like this even better than a solid fruity version. I love the sleeves and think the different colored cuffs are cute, even though there were not voluntary design choices. French Terry is super comfortable to wear and a great fabric for such sweatshirts. I fell in love with the print the moment I saw it, and I love it even more in the form of this sweater. It is just so adorable! I will for sure be wearing this loads whenever a casual sweatshirt is appropriate (which is like 90% of the time 😉). I am thrilled!
