March Sweatshirt Challenge Project

The topic for our March ASG meeting this month is sweatshirt makeovers.  This ties in perfectly with my recent closet clean-out project too!  In my quest to clear up some space, I came across this oversized fleece top I've had for awhile, but haven't worn so this was going to be the perfect starting point.

As you can see, it started out as a pretty boring sweatshirt. Way too big and lacking style.

Front view

Back view

Next, I starting gathering a bunch of potential candidates to assist in the makeover.  I had felted sweaters, various fabric pieces both knit and woven and a bunch of trims.  After trying various combinations of the items below, I finally settled on the felted sweater in the top left of the picture below.

I was so engrossed in the makeover project, that I forgot to take pictures of the starting sweater so I've used the one below as an example.  

After removing the collar from the sweatshirt, I cut the felted sweater along the red lines indicated below, being sure to keep one of the side seams intact. Then, I started draping and folding the sweatshirt to see what it wanted to become.  

The back was way, way too big, so I pinned in some darts.  One along the center back line and two about two inches apart from that.  I didn't like just the look of just straight darts so I flared out the bottoms of the two outside darts.  Each dart was a fold of 1 inch, therefore taking up a total of 6 inches in the back.

Now I had another 6 inches in the front to take out.  The sweatshirt seemed to naturally fold at an angle, so I decided to go with that.  I pinned on a zipper, and started draping the lower portion of the felted sweater to become the collar.  I pinned on some leftover zippers along the edge of the collar and liked the look of that but it was still missing something.  I found these large plastic buttons in my button stash the pinned them along the edge of the collar too - perfect!

The bottom portion of the sleeves are from the top front and back of the felted sweater.  They seemed to work perfectly for this new purpose.

The pocket is a piece cut from the turtleneck of the felted sweater.

After an afternoon of sewing, cutting and contemplating, here's the finished product!  Pretty snazzy if I do say so myself!  The collar gave me a little bit of hassle but after a 15 minute break to clear the mind, I finally figured out how to get it to work.

The darts in the back stuck out too much when I first sewed them so I decided to fold them flat and sew down the middle of each one.  I really like how they turned out.

Until next time, 

Happy Sewing!