I spent a bit of time the other day embellishing my Bertha cardigan with some vinyl and realised I never got round to blogging about it!

The Bertha cardigan is from the latest Tilly and the Buttons book, Make It Simple. I tested three of the patterns – the Tabitha midi dress, Safiya playsuit and the Bertha cardigan. I haven’t blogged the other two makes either, mostly because there’s a huge lag between testing and publishing (as you’d expect for a book!) that I’m knee deep in another project by the time of release! 🙈

All the projects in this book are designed to be quick and easy to make to try to get even the busiest of us sewing. There’s an estimated time taken for each step so you can organise what sewing time you have around it! It comes with alternative simplified instruction too which is great for those with a little more experience under their belts.

The Bertha cardigan has a raglan sleeve in an exaggerated batwing shape. The pattern pieces end up looking a lot like big triangles! It has an open front in that it doesn’t button but falls open from the side of the neck. There’s also an option for a pocket (which I didn’t do but wish I did!).

I made mine with remnants of fleece back sweatshirting from other projects.

The leopard print is from Stoff and Stil and the beige from Guthrie and Ghani.

I chose to use two different colours to make it look almost like an American letterman jacket/ sports bomber. I wanted to add something to the back to emphasise that! It ended up taking me a loooooooong time to get around to doing so though!

It was hard to decide what to do to embellish but I chose to use some flocked vinyl from Happy Fabric with the phrase “wild thing” in reference to the leopard print which I cut with my Cricut Maker! I think it turned out pretty well!

I really should my Cricut and vinyl to embellish more – it’s always so much fun!

It’s a fun simple cardigan in an interesting shape. I love the sporty vibe of mine!