Patience rewarded - Jalie 2679

Ever since he was about 5 years old, P has been asking me for a top with thumb loops. Finally I got around to it.

I have a cycling top of my own from Ground Effect and knew he'd like something like it: Windproof on the front, breathable at the back, roomy pockets and those much desired thumb loops....

I knew I'd have to make some modifications to achieve what he/we wanted and so figured I should use what I had to hand. Enter Jalie 2679 - a women's softshell jacket pattern. The pattern had pretty much everything needed except the thumb loops and a shaped cycling-style "whale tail" at the back.

I recalled that deep in my fabric stash I had a decent amount of an amazing double sided, windblock microfleece - last used back here when he started primary school! (cutey!!) I'm sure my intention was to use it all up while it matched the school colours. With only the younger child left in grade 6 I might have missed the boat on that!

There was some navy sweater fleece in the stash but it is very thick and has little to no stretch and wasn't going to work. The other find (I really do have too much fabric) was this lighter blue athletic knit. It's fleecy on the inside, very soft and a much stretchier type knit than a cotton sweater knit. At first I was disappointed that the colours didn't match but then P and I decided together that the blue on navy colour blocking was kinda cool.

The jacket usually has a longish, hemmed, single layer cuff. I wanted my thumb loop to arise from where the cuff meets the sleeve, so I redrew my cuff shape to give the curve over the back of the hand and less depth around where the thumb loop would be.

Then I cut two cuffs for each side, stitched them together around the outer edge and turned them. The thumb loop was made by cutting an oval out of the cuff and then binding the raw edge with rib knit (and yes, there was navy in the stash!)

To make up for the shorter cuff, I'd added about 2 inches of length to the sleeve. but I'd forgotten about the freakish arms of this kid. There was a big gap between sleeve and cuff! I'd already been having a bit of fun using silver, reflective bias binding in a few of the seams, so we agreed that a sleeve extender (patent pending) might be able to look deliberate with the addition of some more reflective piping. That's another full 5" of sleeve length added. Freak.

For his measurements I chose the women's size R, then added 1" body length to the front panels (above the bottom front band) and to the backside panels, curving towards and inch and a half where the back sides meets the back, then dipping further to curve across the centre back

For just the cost of the zippers and the reflective binding it turned out brilliantly and I'm so glad I finally gave him his thumb loop top.