I just completed my first substantial sewing project, using a pattern from this site! My hems aren’t the most even and the neckline was really tricky but I’m pretty happy with it. This is the Sven sweatshirt design, and I used a somewhat heavy knit cotton/polyester fabric. It fits great (as you’d hope!) and will probably become my new winter pajama shirt.

The site is great to use - there are good pictures for how to take each of the measurements you need, and I liked the ability to manually optimize the part layout to minimize the amount of paper it used. I saw a tip on YouTube to piece the pattern together by taping it to a large window or glass door so you can see the overlap between the sheets, and that worked great for me.

My next goal is to do a Simon shirt in flannel - decent step up in complexity so I might do a few other simpler projects first.

FB marketplace may be where I end up - I’ve seen big fluid totes on there when I’ve looked in the past.

I’m curious where you got your rain water containers - I’d like to get something around that size this year.