Making a Fleece: Designing a Pattern

I've been interested in trying to make my own patterns for sewing and I'm a big fan of fleeces (plus it's been pretty cold lately) so I've decided to try making a fleece sweatshirt! The design is loosely based off this classic Patagonia sweatshirt that my friend has. I've been considering buying one for a while, but they're pretty expensive so we'll see how successful I am at making one. 

To start off, I took a look at the existing sweatshirt (from pics online) and tried to figure out how it worked, i.e. what do the seams look like, how many pieces will I need to cut, what material is it etc. I drew the following sketch to try and begin piecing it all together in my head:

(insert pic of sketch from notebook)

After looking at the seams I quickly realized I know nothing about proper sewing seams so I tried doing some research. The following links proved pretty helpful:

• 12 Tips for Sewing with Fleece
• Tutorial: Mock Flat Fell Seams

The mock/faux flat fell seam looked particularly cool so I tested it out on a piece of fleece I had laying around and got the following result. It looks way better than the standard "just stitch it inside out" strategy I had always been running off of.

(insert pic of sample flat fell seam)

I have no idea how dimensions work for clothing design so I decided to just take an existing sweatshirt I have and trace the outline for each piece. Some previous patterns I've sewn recommend a 5/8" seam so I left that much extra fabric around the edges. I used a sharpie to trace everything and then cut. PRO TIP: BUY A ROTARY CUTTER!! It's essentially a pizza cutter for cloth. I didn't have this for the first half of my fabric cutting but when I got it, it CHANGED MY WORLD.

Then began the process of sewing together the seams. I decided to put together the pieces on the front panel first, I was mostly concerned that if connecting pieces were different sizes there would be trouble. So I sewed together the front three pieces and checked with the back panel to make sure they were roughly the same size. Did a little trimming here to get them more precise.