Me and my at-at Bimaa hoodie and giveaway

Prepare your eyes for some nerdy hoodie goodness! The Bimaa sweater PDF pattern by Lou Bee Clothing found its way to my sewing room and this is the first version I've sewn up....that is if you don't count the first version that I hacked apart and killed. Heh.

The Lou Bee patterns have been quite the hit in the kid sewing community. Not surprising considering Sarah's design sense is modern and interesting.

 

more after the jump!

The Bimaa sweater is a nicely done pattern, and I've already seen several really great versions of it. It's got a nice slim fit and three options for the neck - hood, cowl, and shawl. They all look super cute too and I want to try them all. My kids say no to cowl though, so boo on them.  Everyone else is doing it, ladies!

I loved sewing this. The pattern pieces all fit together beautifully, fit is great, instructions thorough, finished product adorable. Plus it's unisex so you can use it for all of your kids.

Mine is sewn in a heather gray sweater knit that's springy and soft, with a black patch on the front sporting custom art just for Violet.

I love this final product. The heather gray sweater knit looks like lightspeed to me, and the white hood looks star wars-esque. Oh, and the picture! A few friends had shown me shirts with this girl walking her at-at and it was so very Violet that I had to do it. Staring at the black fabric and seeing night, I also pictured the death star sitting like a moon in the sky.

I stenciled it all on with freezer paper and jacquard paints in white, gold, and gray. After it dried I added the detail work to the death star, trying to give the overall impression of it.

My original plan was to make a black hoodie for violet since it's her favorite color, but there was heartache and turmoil at every turn with that first version. The sweater knit I got had too much drape and not enough stretch, which is a bizarre combination to me. But it stretched all vertical and weird before it was even finished. Plus it didn't feel like it was going to be comfortable with not enough softness or stretch.  Then things went really nutty towards the end.

Pieces for a black hood were cut, sewn into a shell and lining and laying on my ironing board, but when I found time to sew them together they were gone. Like nooooowhere. Searched the house. Nothing. And neither kid could tell me a thing about it.

Already frustrated with how things were going, I moved on and used the rest of my black fabric to cut a second hood. 15 minutes after cutting it and leaving it on my sewing table, I returned and omg.... it was GONE. I've finally done it, I thought. Lost my mind!

Then after an exhaustive search and some angry text messages, the pieces turned back up in my scrap bag. Looks like a little "helper" was cleaning off my table, which makes no sense considering how she never cleans anything else. The original hood never resurfaced though. So. Weird.

Thinking I was in the clear and nearly finished with the project, I sabotaged it myself by somehow managing to sew the hood lining to the shell all wrong. I still don't know how. It's not hard at all. Plus I had done an extra awesome job of topstitching it. That business wouldn't come out without destruction of the delicate sweater knit, so I used some mismatched knit to make a third hood, which I sewed to the sweater and promptly hated. 

Ready to never deal with this sweater again, I grabbed the other knit I'd gotten for a second Bimaa, sewed it up without a problem (aside from not having enough for both layers of hood and then accidentally attaching it wrong side out while sewing late at night). Then I cut the graphic from the old hoodie and frankensteined it to the new one. Aaaand a sigh of relief.

The final revenge of the black hoodie was that I used newspaper to keep the paint from bleeding through to the back, and it dried hard into the paint, gluing patches of itself to my fabric. uuuugh. really? lol. 4$ a yard knit never cost so much grief. 

I just love this pattern. Can't wait to make more for fall! And I'm scheming on making it a zip hoodie.

For her pictures, Violet hung out with her At-At Christmas gift from last year 

(yeah craigslist!), and her daddy's smaller version too. Such a cutie.

Now as promised - the giveaway!!

If you would like a chance to win your own copy of the pattern, just enter the rafflecopter widget and leave a blog comment telling me what you're most excited about sewing this fall, or a new fabric that you can't resist. Giveaway ends on Oct 17.

Personally, I've got my eyes set on the Charley Harper fabric, and I'm pretty excited about trying out some new oliver and S patterns I've got.

Thank you so much to Sarah for asking me to participate in her tour! Check out her blog to see the rest of her pattern tour and all the great Bimaas being made for girls and boys

a Rafflecopter giveaway