Crochet pixie hoodie

It's finally finished - the crochet hoodie I've been working on for months. I'm so pleased and look how gorgeous my wonderful girl looks in it!


I started the journey with this hoodie in late December, post Christmas rush. My daughter's birthday is in early January and she often gets slightly overlooked due to the Christmas craziness. Family are very good at remembering her birthday but we have to be extra organised to make sure the budget stretches to her birthday. This year (technically last year!) I decided to make her something special: a fairy hoodie. Merida loves fairies, pixies, elves and all such creatures. She's forever searching for them when we go to the woods. 

I set about the search, as I so often do in these cases, on Pinterest. I found amazing pictures but few patterns I could either decipher or relate to or that was the right thing. Finally I found this pattern: Lutine des Fleurs by Sylvia Damey. There was a eureka moment when I found this. It was perfect. It's also a wonderful pattern: so well written, laid out well, plenty of pictures and explanations as you need them and really clear and precise. I was more than happy to have paid for this pattern. The point I found interesting was that the whole pattern starts at the point of the hood and works through the hood and down the body with the arms attached at the end.


As you can see the original photo from the pattern looks a little different to mine. As usual I gave mine the 'Josie' treatment because I don't think I've ever followed a pattern 100% truly, even a great pattern like this. I used King Cole Shine DK Festive for the yarn. 

The pattern calls for a worsted weight yarn so I combined two balls of the DK Festive and this produced the right size for the gauge check. At times it was tricky because the colour changes came at different times on the different balls of yarn, so I had to readjust as I went along. Oh my the loose ends produced from that! For the arms I used a random buy of some red sparkly yarn I found in a sale (and therefore can't remember it's name and have lost the ball band!). It was a bigger double knit size so I only needed one ball at a time of this one. It did make the garment a little heavy which worried me but my girl pulled it off, thankfully.

The original has a zip. Now I had intended to be brave and use a zip but another adjustment made this difficult: I made the hoodie longer. Now my daughter is 9 years old but very tall so I made the adult XS size. When I got to the hip part it didn't look long enough so I added a few rows. This meant the zip I'd bought wasn't long enough. I consulted with the intended recipient and she requested buttons, so buttons it was. 


We went to John Lewis and Merida chose some buttons she liked. They matched well with the yarn I'd used so I was happy plus they had a very pixie/elf/fairy feel to them. Don't you think they're perfect?

Unfortunately the addition of rows meant it wasn't quite wide enough at the hips and so I had to add a little extra at the front to make sure it wasn't too tight. There was a border already and so the boarder just became a little bigger. Where there are several vertical stripes there's only supposed to be one as a simple boarder.

I'm annoyed with myself for not realising that making the body longer should have been after the widening for the hips but we live and learn. It works but needs a little blocking to help it sit a little better. I've never blocked a garment before so need to do a little research for that.

One touch I love on this hoodie is the contrasting flower pattern around the edge of the hood and the bottom of the main body. It's so pretty and so simple. In the original there is some surface crochet or embroidery to finish it off either side of the flower pattern. Due to the yarn I've used I didn't think it would show up enough so I omitted that detail. In a solid block of colour it would be beautiful so when I make myself one (you know, in 2026) I'll maybe do that.

By the way none of the big photos have filters on them. This is the true colour of the hoodie taken with a beautiful Devon backdrop.

This hoodie has been a labour of love but a thoroughly enjoyable one. I'm so pleased my daughter loves it and has hardly taken it off since. Well worth the wait and the making hours. I've managed to finish it just in time for a festival too so my girl will fit right in. Maybe I should make a big label and attach it to her back with my logo! Too much?! Well, for now I'll just be pleased. On to the next project. I'll leave you with a picture of my beautiful model in her new crochet pixie hoodie.

Cheers for now,

Josie.