I made my first Grainline Studio Linden Sweatshirt! I say ‘my first’ because I’m definitely going to be making more! I feel like this could be a smart enough pattern to wear for work, depending on the fabric you use. And obviously it’s a great casual, slobbing around the house, kind of pattern.

I made the straight size 2, view A, which has the cuffs and hem band – and long sleeves, obvs. This was a really easy pattern to put together and only took a couple of hours, really, once I’d figured out how to attach the neck band, cuffs and hem band. And especially when I realised I was meant to cut 2 hem bands, on the fold and not just one – I did have a few minutes of ‘well how is this going to fit around my hips’ before I realised my mistake!

I didn’t make any fitting changes and, as you can see above. there is quite a bit of excess fabric on the back, especially in my lower back. I pretty much always find this and since it’s a loose pattern, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. I do really need to learn how to fix this, though, for future, more fitted patterns.

There also seems to be something weird going on around the armpit area – does anyone know why this is? I’ve found on previous patterns that I need extra room there sometimes, but I’m not sure if that’s the case here, as it’s such a slouchy pattern.

The fabric was another ‘remnant’ from my beloved Rolls and Rems at Holloway Road. Their remnant bin has long lengths of one-offs and not just the end of rolls of stuff they sell by the metre, so you can often pick up some interesting stuff for not much money. This must have been about 3 metres and it was only £9.99. I love the aztec-y print, and check out my pattern matching at the side seam:

You can barely see the seam, I’m super proud. You can’t really see where the cuffs are either, though it messes up the pattern slightly, but you can’t tell. I also like how the neck band is one row of the zig zags.

The only downside of this sweatshirt is that the fabric isn’t quite as warm as I thought it would be. I definitely want to try this in a proper, thick, sweatshirt fabric and also to experiment with colour blocking – I’m always a bit afraid that colour-blocking will go horribly wrong and I’ll choose 2 things that definitely do not go together! I think I’ll try stealing from a ready to wear top like I did for my Refashioners Dear Creatures rip off!

Have you made the Linden Sweatshirt? Has it become one you’ve made over and over again?