Welcome to another project and a new format! I’m switching up the structure here to try and adjust to what might work better for readers. My most recent sewing project was a quarter button-up fleece sweater, inspired by none other than those iconic Patagonia sweaters! I came across this pattern a while back when I picked up a handful of patterns from Simplifi Fabric, and I was most excited to tackle this one.
I ended up making two of these, one for me and one for boyfriend. Mine was a solid maroon colour, but boyfriend wanted a colour blocked one so I fiddled around a bit with the pattern to make it happen (and that’s the one you’ll see in this post). Luckily, the sizing of these patterns were pretty good too and didn’t require much editing; if anything, it was just shortening the length of mine to fit my proportions better and reducing the height of the collar to be more comfortable. I also chose to drop the chest pocket and switch the waist cord out for elastic (see pattern diagram below) for a simpler look.
Here’s what I used:
My biggest takeaway: Working with fleece
There’s a lot of different types of fleece out there, different weights, different textures, etc., so I was slightly overwhelmed at the beginning when I was exploring what type of fleece I could use. This pattern by The Green Pepper recommends using Polartec® fleece, so naturally I narrowed my search to that, and discovered shortly after that it’s a VERY warm fabric that’s quite light! Like way warmer than I would’ve expected, making it pretty perfect for Canadian winters. It’s also quick-drying with water-resistant properties—like whaaaaat? Great fabric.
A minor hurdle I came by though when purchasing Polartec® fleece was the limited colours available. I ended up getting this fleece in 3 colours (maroon, blue, and green) from 2 different shops (Simplifi Fabric and Blackbird Fabrics), but it did take a bit of looking to find what I wanted. If I wanted to make these again in the future in different colours, I may need to do some sleuthing.
Sewing with this kind of fleece was actually easier than I anticipated. Given the weight, I thought I might have some issues pushing it through my machine with how thick the fleece is, but it went a lot smoother than I expected! Because of how much it compresses, I actually didn’t have too many issues on that front. The only trick I had to use was the one to level my sewing foot when feeding layers of fleece through; the one where you put a piece of scrap fabric of similar thickness under the sewing foot, right behind your fabric, to level the sewing foot before sewing from an edge (I used this trick while working with canvas in Tote bag 2.0 if you’re curious). Overall, this fleece was easy to work with, making it a type of fabric I’d be happy to work with again.
The outcome
So after many hours of work, here we are, the finished colour-blocked Polartec® fleece pullover sweater! Ready for many winters to come. This was a relatively smooth project with a fantastic outcome; I might even consider making a vest with the fabric I have leftover. Thanks for stopping by 🙂
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