 Hey guys, it's Brandon, creator of Happily Dressed, a fashion blog dedicated to self-acceptance, self-confidence, and self-sufficiency, and welcome back to the channel. Today I am excited because we are doing another pattern drafting video. For the first half of this video, we're gonna be drafting out a half zip pullover pattern. So a lot of you guys ask me where I get my ideas from, and literally I get inspiration from the fabric that I thrift. If you don't know, I try to thrift as much as my fabric as I can. Sometimes I go buy it, but most of the time I find it at Goodwill or Value Village, or wherever they sell like draperies, curtains, bedsheets, because wherever that section is in your secondhand shop, that's also where you'll find fabric. But I was just at my local Goodwill and I found this in the fabric section. Along with another fabric that I'm very excited about for a video, but that's just gonna have to wait. But I found this and I thought, this already looks like some kind of pullover. So this is the fabric right here. I thought it was a really cool design. It looks already like it should be some kind of pullover or hoodie. So pick this up if you do not want to draft one from scratch. But I saw this and thought, you know what? I could do this myself with my own measurement. So why not try to teach you guys how to do the same thing? So if you want to skip the drafting, go pick up that pattern. But if not, let's just continue with the video. So we're gonna need a few measurements first before we get started. So do me a favor and go ahead and grab your measuring tape and we're gonna measure our bust, which is like from nipple to nipple and making sure you keep it straight in the back. So my normal bust is about 37, but because this is gonna be a pullover and we want to be able to wear things under it, I'm gonna increase it by about three inches, right at 40 to give me some space. So as much space as you want, you can give to yourself. I think 40 would be good. That's my bust. Go ahead and write that down. Then we're gonna go up to the shoulder seams. So commonly your shoulder seam will sit right in the middle of your shoulder. So I like to put my measuring tape there to determine how long I want the garment to be. So a normal length for me would be 21 because it hits me an inch right below my waist, which is how I like to wear it most of my button ups, pullovers, shirts, it doesn't matter. A little crop is always better for me because I have such a short torso. So 21 would be my length. Next, you're gonna want to find the length that the first half of your front is going to end. So like where your zipper will be basically. How you do this is by going back to that shoulder seam position and coming down and be like, okay, I want it to hit like right at the sleeve. That would be around 10 and a half inches, like right where the armhole would be. It's gonna be where your zipper stops as well. So you don't want it to go all the way down here and then you only have like two inches of your shirt length unless you're making a longer garment. So for me, I would probably choose 10 and a half of my zip to stop. So I'm just gonna record that length as well. So you'll write down your total length of your garment and then the length of the first front half of the garment. Next, we're gonna get your shoulder seam width. So basically how I like to do this is by putting the measuring tape starting where I feel like the top of the garment will sit and then measuring out how long I want the shoulder to be. And for the most part for me, it's always either five or six. If I wanted to be drop shoulder, I'd make it a little longer, like eight or nine. But for me, I wanted to sit relatively up here. So maybe I'll do six. So I'll record my shoulder width as six inches. And then lastly, we will do sleeve length. So if you wanted to be short sleeve, you'll just start where your shoulder seam would start. And you can guesstimate this too because we'll fine tune the pattern as we go. So if I wanted to be long sleeve, starting with what my sleeve would hit, which I believe would be right here, I'd want it to be around 21 inches for me. So you're just gonna say like, where is my wrist? If I let this fall naturally, where would it sit? And you always want to go longer because you can always take away, but you cannot add. And then we'll get started. The color is something we'll do as we go. So let's go for it. So here's my drawing for how I want the hoodie to look. We have our little pieces, what each piece is. The measurements that I just told you guys to record, but this is for myself. And then now we're going to start drafting. So we're going to start off by drafting your front piece. To give you a summation, we're gonna be making a square and from that, creating the first half of our front pattern. First, you're gonna take that length measurement that you recorded for the top half of your front pattern and go ahead and draw that in. For me, that was 10 and a half inches. So I make sure I specified that for you guys. And then you're gonna take your bust measurement divided by four and use that for your width. And for me, that was also 10 inches since my bust width was 40 to give me some more space. And then I'm going to close off the square by doing another 10 and a half inches for length. And then for width at the top, again, doing another 10. And I'm keeping this in real time so you guys can just see the pattern process from start to finish. And now zoom again, it's a little blurry, but I'm gonna freehand a front neck hole line. I went about three inches out from the top and about an inch and a half to two inches down because a shoulder seam is not straight, it is angled. I took my ruler and matched it to these six inches that I wanted my shoulder width to be and drew that down at a diagonal. This will look different from every person, but hopefully you can see from where I did it on mine how you can start with yours. And then from there, I have a curved ruler that I use sometimes to do my shoulder seams and I use that to help me figure out how big my shoulder hole was going to be. Pattern drafting, especially self drafting is a lot of guesstimation, I like to say. And then from there, I did a half inch seam allowance all the way around my front pattern because these will be two separate pieces. So I'm putting half an inch all around where I originally drafted out all my measurements. And for some of the curves because there aren't any rulers for those curves, I just free handed them and then I used the curve ruler again to help me with the shoulder seam. So that's the top half of your front all done. We're going to move to the bottom half but to keep us in line with what we need, we knew that our total length was 21 inches. So we know that the bottom half of our front pattern piece will also be 10 and a half because the top part was 10 and a half and 10 and a half plus 10 and a half is 21 inches. So now I'm going ahead and tracing that out. So there's 10 and a half I'm marking that and then also 10 for the width as well because the width will always be the same because it's based off the 40 inch bust measurement and we will be cutting this on a, and we will be cutting this on a fold. That's what I'm marking out now. So this side will actually not get seam allowance because it'll be on a fold. This is something that I mess up on throughout this entire video. I don't realize to the end. So wherever you see fold, there should not be any seam allowance because that's where you will place the pattern onto the fabric at a fold. So now I'm going to add seam allowance everywhere else and just pretend like you don't see that seam allowance by the fold. So yeah, that is your two front pieces all done which is pretty awesome. Now you're going to cut those out. Moving on to our back piece. We know that the length is 21 inches so I'm going to draw a rectangle that is 10 inches wide and 21 inches long for the length of our piece in total for the back. And this is something that you will also cut out on a fold so that side will not get any seam allowance. Remember that because I don't listen to myself and I put seam allowance, don't do that. So to understand this next part, it's best to go ahead and add seam allowance to all the remaining sides of half an inch, not including the front and then take your front pattern and match up the seam allowance at the shoulder seam and the side seam that isn't with the fold to the seam allowance of this rectangle and then trace that out. By tracing out this front pattern, you are already adding your seam allowance because your front has seam allowance. And you'll see that when your seam allowance is match up from your rectangle and the pattern piece that you are tracing out. So I'm going to show you what I'm doing in real time. And then for the neck hole, I am free handing a back shape because it shouldn't be the same as your neck hole because it'll sit higher up on your neck. So now I'm just filling in the rest of the gaps. This is something that you won't have to do because you would have already added seam allowance. I didn't yet. And then you'll cut that out. Thanks for bearing with me on that. Hopefully that all makes sense. You should not have seam allowance where the fold is. I did and that messed me up. But there should be seam allowance for your front half piece because those are two individual pieces that'll attach to a zipper. The rest will be cut on a fold so they do not need seam allowance on those sides. So with the pieces cut out, this is what they look like. So before we start putting them together, this is why it's good to use some kind of sample fabric first before your real fabric because you want to test to see if our neck hole is right. So basically I'm putting it to where my shoulder seam would be and seeing where it fits on my neck. For me, it was a little high. So I'm going to take it down a half an inch and I will actually mark that with a pin so you can see where that is. So now I took both my front patterns and sandwiched them right sides facing so that way I could cut them at one time. And where that pin was, start my cut and curve it up to that shoulder point. We are not reducing the shoulder point. We are just reducing the neckline. And then now, once you figure out that it works because I took it back to the mirror and it was perfect, you want to place that onto your pattern and fix your pattern as well at the same time. So now we're going to move on to the sleeve. You want to take one of your halves for your top front and trace out that sleeve curve. Mine is already connected because I did another tutorial of this and it was pretty shitty. This one probably just as bad, but we'll see. Go ahead and trace out that curve and then go ahead and take the length that you want your sleeve to be and draw that in. This will also be cut out on a fold. You can get rid of your front half piece now and just work with this curve. You'll need to have your wrist measurement. I chose 10. You would just take that same measuring tape, put it around your wrist and then loosen it up to the fit that you would want. I think 10 is pretty average and standard. So now my width at the bottom will be five inches. I'm going to go ahead and draw that in. And then when I get to the edge of that five inch mark, I want to take my ruler and mark up towards the point of where that sleeve started. And once that's done, I'm going to add seam allowance to the three sides that were not going to be placed on the fold. So that's the bottom, the side, and then the top curve. And here you can see me drawing in the seam allowance for the top curve. And you're going to want it to curve in just a little bit. So it shouldn't be a rounded circle. It should be a point and then it should dip in and then continue the curve. I'm going to give you guys a close up once I'm done. But yeah, make sure that your line is on the fold. And finally, for the first time, I did not put seam allowance on the fold because seam allowance does not go on the fold. And then at the top, you can see where I kind of curved in just a little bit. And you can even do it a little bit more if you're tracing calls for it. Once I cut those out, they look something like this. Also, that's my studio mate's foot in the shot. To make sure nothing frays on the inside, I'm going to surge the corners of the two top pieces and then also the width of the bottom piece. It looks like this once I'm done. So the side, the bottom, and then the top of the bottom piece. I fold it in the sides that we're going to attach to the zipper by half an inch. I gave them a little press with my iron to make it easier. And then I pinned them to both sides of the zipper. Took it to the sewing machine. And once that was done, I went ahead and attached the bottom part of the front to the top part of the front. As you can see, I have it pinned down now. I sewed it. Then I flipped it back, gave it a little press, and then top stitched it down. From there, I took the back and connected it to the front, right sides facing, pinned at the shoulder seams, and went ahead and sewed those down as well. I thought I was done. I tested it in the mirror to see how it was fitting. I loved how snug it was on my neck. It was right where I wanted it. And the shoulder pieces look nice. I also decided to throw in a pocket at the last minute. So I created this rectangle pocket and flap. This part was a fun little bonus I just wanted to add to increase some cuteness to my half zip pullover. Working on the pocket separately, I went ahead and attached it to the front with some pins. Always pin down your stuff before you start sewing so it does not move. And then once I was done, I gave it a good little press. Everything was actually starting to look really nice at this point. And then I moved on to the shoulders. I went ahead and matched up the middle of the shoulder to the middle of the seam of the front and back together. And then pinned along that line, making sure it was as matched up as possible. Once that was done, I took it to the sewing machine and sewed it together with a straight stitch. After that was done, I surged it and gave it a good press. Nearing the end, now I went to close the front and the backs together at the sleeve seam and side seams. This is also when I realized that I messed up because of the seam allowance on the fold, the back was a little longer than the front. I did my best to try to fix it, but it ended up being a little pinchy for me in the armpits. So adding the collar, I put my pullover on my mannequin, but you can do this literally laying it on a table and measure the distance from the openings of both sides of the collar. For me, it was 19 and a half inches. So I went to the drawing board and because this will be cut out on a fold, I measured out a length of eight and a fourth inch or 8.25 inches. Went ahead and marked that as my width for the bottom of the collar. I want it to be about three inches long. So I put that on the side and then I extended the top part a little bit up to nine and a half. So that way I'd have a nice point at the edge of both sides of my collar. Now this is me adding seam allowance to all sides when I should just do it to three because it'll be cut out on a fold. I never listened. Next to get the collar right, what you could do to help you out is press your collar in a half an inch wrong sides facing. So I did it right sides facing and there was no going back but you should press it at half an inch wrong sides facing and sew a half an inch seam allowance on all three sides. Then you'll turn it out and give it a press and it should look something like this if you did it the right way. Then I just added the collar to the neckline at a half an inch seam allowance and take your time with this. It definitely takes a little finessing sometimes when adding collars because it is a curved surface but the more you do it, the better you will get. Take that to the sewing machine and gave it a straight stitch and that was the collar put on and this is basically the end. Now we just hemmed the bottom and the sleeves and then we're all done. All right, you guys ready for the grand reveal? I mean, you've seen most of it already anyway. So, but it's all done. So it's him at the bottom. I wish I would have wore pants today, but I didn't. I wore a jumpsuit but without showing you guys too much. There we go, it's all done. Okay, cool, make sure the collar's laying down. Been there before where it hasn't been. I'm super excited with how this turns out, you guys. I just remember, ooh, I'll take my neck off. I just remember when I was at Goodwill, I was like, oh, this would be a great pullover. Let me make it and then, or I have to pullover. And then I did, I like forget that when you know the basics of sewing, you can like make things, it's crazy. But yeah, my little kangaroo pocket. I love this bad boy. The back him sits nicely too. I have pants, you'd be able to see that. But I don't, but let's now sit down and talk about what I could do better. All right, so though I love this bad boy, a few things that I would change. First of all, is I widen my pattern just because I made a mistake halfway through where I cut off some excess that really wasn't excess. I just couldn't see that because I didn't have my front and backs together. But because of that, it made it a lot slimmer than it was supposed to be. But even before that mistake, I thought maybe this is a little too small. So I'm going to take my pattern, which is not hanging up right there. Take my pattern and just widen it a little bit more to make me happy. I think that it will do better with the sleeves as well because it's pinching a little bit in the sleeves and that's because I didn't have that extra half inch seam allowance to do what I was supposed to because I messed up. Another thing that I do differently, which I did tell you guys in the voiceover is that I left like a half centimeter of this or a half inch of this open because I thought that it would help me sandwich in the collar to the front and back better. But that was dumb because if I don't top stitch this then it will just remain open and that's kind of what it is right now. But it's only a half inch so you can barely tail. So don't do that. Now, whenever I want to make a half-sip hoodie, I can just pull that out and then bam, we got two fronts, part one, the front part two, pocket, sleeves, the back. And that's just how cool sewing can be. You can draft a pattern yourself and be like, damn, every time I, ooh, maybe not damn, but wow, every time I want to make something or I need a new pullover, I can just make another one, which is super cool. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. If you do try it out yourself, please let me know. You can tag me on Instagram at happily dressed. I pray and hope that you get as lucky as me at the thrift store when it comes to finding cool fabrics that excite you and motivate you and inspire you to make something cool. And until next time, I'll see you guys in my next video. See you guys later.