During my first fundraising campaign for St. Jude PLAY LIVE in 2018, I was shown such generosity for the kids that I ran out of milestone incentives. On a whim, I said I would crochet this extremely retro piece of clothing that I had saved in my library on Ravelry.
It’s a pair of “shortalls” released in 1971 by the McCalls pattern company. The pattern is still available on this archived webpage (hello GeoCities nostalgia).
And of course I said I would turn them into Pokemon overalls! I didn’t get started on them until months later, but I knew I wanted them to be water themed so I chose 3 different shades of blue yarn:
- Loops & Threads Impeccable in royal blue *Amazon affiliate link
- Loops & Threads Impeccable in bright sky blue
- Loops & Threads Impeccable in blue haze
You can use any yarns you like, but I suggest using the same brand to keep the gauge and shape correct. I chose Impeccable because they have a great range of shades if you’re going for variations of a singular color.
I had to kind of guess how many squares I’d be making as the sizing for the shortalls seemed outdated. I started with an H hook to make the squares as close to the gauge as I could. I had to add a row so they were between 4.5-5″ each and I started with 21 squares (10 less than what the pattern says as I wanted a smaller pair and my squares were a bit bigger).
I followed the directions pretty closely when it came to joining them together. I just made sure to try it on as many times as I could to make sure they would fit. Starting with the legs, I realized I only needed to sew 4 squares together instead of 5 for each leg. From there it was easy to figure out how many more I needed and ended up making 25 squares total. It went mostly according to plan! I thought making a piece of clothing like this would be way more complicated but I’m happy to say it felt pretty easy. And having a dressform helped a lot too!
Watch the livestream highlights of this project
I designed all the Pokemon patches except for the Magikarp, whose pattern is no longer available sadly. I took notes and shared them with my Twitch subscribers and Patrons. If you become one of those at some point, you’ll have access to all of them through my discord server. It was tough deciding on just 8 gen 1 water Pokemon (I wanted the patches to alternate squares), but these were my favorites. Plus, I can always I add more to the blank squares later 😉 And thanks to whoever it was in my livestream one day for suggesting the Gyarados strap!
I would say that sewing the patches on would be the best way to attach them, but I found hot glue to be adequate and a really fast way to do it and no sewing heck yes. Especially since they’re just for me, I can fix them if anything falls off. But so far so good!
See this project on Ravelry
I love them so much an I never want to take them off. I feel like the coolest Pokemon trainer - you can just call me Misty.
Thank you so much to everyone who showed support for this project and especially to all those who donated to St. Jude to make it happen! For the kids, always <3
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