My favorite alumni hoodie sweatshirt was just a tad too tight to be comfortable, so I did a lot of looking online for ideas on how to make it fit with more positive ease.
After watching many, many sewing video tutorials about adding a gusset, I felt confident enough to attempt it on my hoodie. The risk was that this line of hoodies was a one-time purchase done by my alumni association, so if I messed this one up, I wouldn't be able to buy another one just like it again. So that was scary, because I like my hoodie.
Once I had the process set in my mind, the next step was to find the right fabric. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted a nice windowpane plaid flannel fabric that incorporated the green from my hoodie with some blue and gold and white. I found a fabric I liked on eBay and bought 1/2 yard, which would give me just enough to add a wide strip of gusset to each side of the hoodie.
I started deconstructing the hoodie by carefully picking out the stitches holding the cuffs to the ends of the sleeves, so I could reattach the cuffs after adding the gussets. I envisioned the gussets tapering gradually from the underarm area to the wrist, where there would be very little gusset width left showing, because I didn't need to add much width to the sleeves. Also, that way, I could reattach the cuffs without having changed the width of the ends of the sleeves by much.
After removing the cuffs, the next step was cutting open the sides. (((Yikes)))
Because my hoodie had no side seams originally, the scariest part of this entire project was the actual cutting of the sides.
To make my side cuts as straight as possible, I laid the hoodie out flat on my worktable and smoothed it out until it was very even and straight. Using my sewing clips, I clipped along the fold to help hold it in place so it wouldn't shift as I was marking my line. Then I took my tailors chalk and slowly and carefully started to sketch a cutting line down each side from the point of the underarm where the sleeve's inner seam ended, bit by bit moving down the side along the fold in between the clips. After each side had a good chalk line drawn, I removed the clips and picked up my fabric scissors and took a couple of DEEP breaths.
Then I slowly and carefully cut open each side, all the way down to the end of the sleeve (cutting open the sleeves was easier, because the sleeves had seams to follow to guide my cuts).
Cutting the hoodie was REALLY scary, as I've already said. But it worked!
The next step was to prepare my flannel fabric for cutting. I measured how long each gusset piece would need to be to extend from the end of the sleeve, up the arm, and down the side to beyond the hem, leaving enough excess fabric to turn under as a hem. (I didn't remove the cuff from around the waist of the hoodie before cutting the sides; I cut through each side of that cuff along with each side.)
I wanted a 3.5-4-inch wide gusset showing on each side after sewing the pieces together. I also wanted to use flat-felled seams where I added the gussets, so the finish would be clean on both the right side and the wrong side of the hoodie, so before cutting, I had to include a sufficient amount of seam allowance to accommodate those.
I had never sewn flat-felled seams before, so I had to watch a few video tutorials for how to do that. (And then I watched them again before starting each seam - once for each of the four seams!) I found this video tutorial by Notches Sewing to be the most helpful.
Having gussets that taper down to almost nothing at the wrists made executing the flat-felled seams more difficult, but I just went slowly, and it worked out.
It took several days to finish all the sewing of the side seams, because I spent a LOT of time carefully pinning and watching the video over and over to make extra sure that I was setting myself up to do it right, and then being extra careful during the actual sewing.
Once the sides were sewn together, it was fairly straightforward to pin the cuffs back onto the ends of the sleeves and then sew them on.
And then, just like that, it was done!
I'm really pleased with how well this project turned out. My husband said it looks like the hoodie was made this way by the manufacturer, which was high praise. It turned out so well, in fact, that I think now I should buy a few more yards of the same plaid fabric and make a pair of lounge pants to coordinate with my super-cool hoodie. (I would follow this video tutorial by Sachi's Studio for making the pants!)
