I made a second So Sew Easy Hoodie as part of the hoodie sewalong on Facebook . I’m a bit hopeless at sewalongs as I don’t wait for each stage but forge ahead, so I’ve managed to finish a couple of weeks early – oops!

I bought the fabric at a lovely local shop called Materialise.  I always consider Materialise to be primarily a quilting fabric shop (although many of their wovens can be used for garments) and I was really surprised to find a couple of knits there.

The owner had bought the fabrics to make things for her daughter, hence the flamingos, which  I used to line the hood and pockets.

My new hoodie had its first outing on a trip to Perth where Mark and I were playing local tourists, which is one of our favourite things. Instead of whizzing around getting jobs done, we wander and really look at our surroundings. We stopped for coffee in The State Building which is actually three historic buildings linked together (see here). There are some great coffee shops in this building, with names such as Telegram Coffee and Petition, as well as reportedly the best Thai restaurant in Perth.

Perth is a relatively young city and I am intrigued that it was founded by felling a tree! The first of many I’m afraid.

We visit Perth fairly regularly and I like to pay attention to things that I haven’t really spent time thinking about. This bronze cast is of a gentleman called Percy Buttons who emigrated from England in 1910. He was a street performer who entertained people whilst they waited to get into restaurants or cinemas. He was rather grubby and so the local paper of the time, The Mirror, cleaned him up, dressed him in a top hat and tails and asked their readers to guess his identity, even offering a prize to the first correct entry! The newspaper article is part of the statue and I had no idea about this bit of history. 

The hood has sparked a bit of a discussion with Mark. I felt that this was the correct orientation of the flamingos, but when the hood is down they are upside down, of course. I also completely messed up the matching of the flamingos down the centre seam.

The neck binding is a tiny piece of bias binding which also came from Materialise and which is left over from my squadron leader quilt. I have now used all this lovely binding and so glad I found a use for the leftovers.

The eyelets came from my friend Leonie’s Mum’s stash, as did the red cord, and the two gold toggles cost me $2 in an op shop a few years ago. It’s so nice to have used them.

 I redrew the pattern pieces to include seam allowances. Given that this fabric has much more stretch and I now had seam allowances I was surprised that the hoodie wasn’t bigger, but it fits perfectly. I once again made the length of the hoodie match the zip, which is another one bought in the Knitwit sale, but this time I lengthened the bodice so it looks a bit better proportioned.  I used the same fabric for the bands, cutting them on the cross grain so that the stripes would be vertical rather than horizontal. I did have a minor hiccup when I cut the facing to the same length of the body rather than the body plus the bottom band. This meant that I had to finagle the band onto the bottom of the facing, but in the end it’s a neater solution – from the outside!

I was a bit worried that this hoodie would be too light to be useful, but it is just the perfect weight for our current weather.