You will love this sweatshirt! Sewing pattern review of HotPatterns 1182 Pretzel Sweatshirt coming right up!
First off, I have this in print (It’s available for digital download from the HotPatterns Etsy store, link below:) so I’ve had it a long time. Why did I not make this before? It’s FAST, it’s stylish, it goes together easily with good professional results and I love it.
The style is a wide neck, slim sleeve, drop shoulder very relaxed fitting sweatshirt with a fun twist front, panels on both front and back (great if you need to work with fabric you don’t have enough of, as you can piece them together.) It has self fabric or rib knit bands at the neck and cuff, and I’ll talk more about that below.
Sewing your Pretzel Sweatshirt
The sewing was easy on this one. While I was sewing it, it seemed so BIG, but when done, it was perfect. Just the right amount of slouch with slim sleeves. Speaking of the sleeves are slim at the lower arm and wrist, so wrap that pattern around your arm and be sure you like that fit, or go up a size or two on the sleeve as you cut it out. Go up on the band size if you do this too. You can see the slimness in the line drawing and pattern drawing. I always add 2″ to HotPatterns for my giant long arms.
I used a sweatshirt fabric with little to no stretch, just a little mechanical stretch, and you’ll need to stretch like mad on the neck and sleeve bands, if you are using this type of fabric. There was some praying when I serged on that neckline, stretching the band like MAD (and it didn’t want to stretch.) And also a little cursing as I missed a layer when serging in the front, had to rip out about 4″ of serging and try again. If you use rib knit, or your fabric has lycra, you won’t have that problem.
The top is probably a teensy bit LONG for my short torso self, but this is a muslin (yes, no kidding! I put it on after sewing it and never took it off, that’s how great it is. Put it right back on today. To shorten, shorten above the tails that become the wrapped panels and shorten both front and back equally. It’s an easy one – just mark and then FOLD the paper pattern and tape it down. Easy!
The front and back hems are sewn differently with great professional results. You’ll sew the narrow hem edges of the wrapped sections first, then wrap them and sew them to the front body for a finished hem. The back has a facing, and you’ll do the “wrap the back facing around to the front, sew and then flip the back facing over, enclosing the end” type of thing. It’s not hard and it’s a great result on the finished hem. Instructions are clear here and I serged the sideseams from the bottom up to make it easier to do this step.
Styling your Pretzel Sweatshirt:
I recommend the styling recommendations on the pattern envelope. Nothing too voluminous on the bottom, as it’s oversized on top. So boyfriend jeans, slim pants like the Tailored Trackpant (also from HotPatterns), a straight long skirt, even a straight tee shirt dress. I have on light wash boyfriend jeans with this and it’s perfect. It turned sharply colder this week and I’m SUPER glad for this fabric, which I got at my local fabric store, Seams Fabric. They don’t carry a lot of knits and they do carry fun prints, so that’s nice. This fabric is thick and plush on the inside.
I love this top and I plan to shorten it 1″ and make it several times more. It would be drapey slouchy in a softer knit, I think it would be awesome in solids with the optional topstitching the pattern recommends.