Plain sweatshirts made fancy

Every summer C and O live in big, cosy sweatshirts or towelling tops. They are fantastic for camping, for blackberrying, for throwing on after a swim, for yomps through the forest and for all those many English summer days that don't turn out to be quite as warm as you hoped.

I embellished this top for C a year and a half ago, and the cuffs now only reach to a couple of inches above his wrists. O has had two years of wear out of a stripey towelling hoody from Mr Boden a bit like this one but can now barely get it over her head.

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Hoodies are always good, because they are cosy when the weather is a bit chilly. It is surprisingly difficult to find plain, sweatshirt hoodies for children online, but I finally plumped for grey Fruit of the Loom ones from Amazon.

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I jazzed O's up with suffolk puffs, button flowers and some plain running stitches. I will always like running stitch for its lovely simplicity.

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My ideas for C's top took longer to agree. I suggested fish, which C declared to be 'soft'. He suggested lots of satin stitch embroidered skulls, which I told him were too fiddly. He then suggested an embroidered dragon, and we finally agreed on an appliqued dragon and yet more running stitch. I'm all about quick results this month.

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The fabric is by Alexander Henry and I bought it from this shop on Etsy. I don't think there is a single Alexander Henry fabric I don't like.

Now C and O both look so cosy in their jazzed up tops, I'm looking round the house to see what else I can embellish. Surely most things can be improved with a suffolk puff or a bit of running stitch?