What do you make for a young relative who loves dinosaurs, when you’ve already made him a cuddly dinosaur before?

I settled for my tried-and-tested Hatteras Hoodie, and went to find some suitable fabric… which was harder than I’d first thought! Eventually I came across this dinosaur sweatshirt fabric at Sewing Studio, and despite the main stretch being vertical rather than horizontal, the random positioning of the dinosaurs meant I could still use it

I’d purchased some black ribbing fabric to use for the hood lining, waistband and cuffs. Unfortunately (the disadvantage of buying online) this fabric was a lot thinner than I’d anticipated. The hood lining didn’t need to be heavy, so I used the ribbing for that, but it wasn’t going to work for the cuffs as it was.

I had part of a pack of cuff ribbing left over, which worked for the cuffs on this hoodie, but there wasn’t enough for the waistband. 

Playing around with the original ribbing fabric, I tried holding two layers together and realised that might just work to give enough stretch and strength for the waistband. This hoodie is an age 6, but made for a child who wears an age 4 at the moment. It should give him a nice long time to wear it before he grows out of it, but it does then need a decent rib for the waistband to help hold it in until he grows more!

I cut four waistband pieces instead of two, and just used the additional ones inside the main waistband pieces to give it more strength. To me, that feels strong enough, but we’ll have to see how well it holds out – he won’t have the chance to try this hoodie on until Father Christmas delivers it next week, so I won’t know for certain just yet!