The Cuff Replacement Debacle aka Repairing an Old Hoodie

I've been sewing away madly for the last few months, but without much to show for it. Mostly it's quick repairs (overlocking split seams usually) and then it's a continuation of a previous project.

A slightly bigger repair was on a favourite hoodie of my husband's. It's getting a bit worn anyway, but the cuffs were particularly threadbare, so he asked for a repair to extend its life a bit more.

The best option was to replace them, so I pulled out some of his old t-shirts to see if we had a reasonable colour match and enough fabric left on them without holes. _{His favourite clothes aren't easily parted with.}

First step was to unpick the cuffs for a pattern to cut from the t-shirt.

This led to an interesting discovery as I cut the fabric and realised that the knit of it was actually not in line with the seams. That explains why so often t-shirts don't sit right after the first wash, making it a pain to fold them and the side seams rotate partway around your body.

The next step was nice and easy, just a case of overlocking them into a ring and folding them seam side in.

The stretch on the resulting cuffs didn't seem as good as the originals, so before attaching them I got my husband to slip them over his hands to made sure they would go over them without tearing the seam.

Then things started to get a little more long winded. The cuffs attach to a much wider sleeve, so I needed to tack them in place first while evenly pulling in the sleeve so as not to cause tucks or pleating. This took a couple of tries for me to figure out, because I tried to take the easier guesstimate route. I got it wrong twice before I measured out into quarters and matched them up instead. _{If this is sounding a bit complicated, then you should be getting the feeling I was having. So welcome to my stress. 😜}

Tacking finally done I loaded up the overlocker with the nearest colour I had, which was dark blue. It's going to be on the inside, so it's not like it will be seen. I have a love hate relationship with overlockers; when they work they're fantastic, but they can be so temperamental. I decided to try and save some thread as I swapped over from the white, which meant rethreading from scratch. You can just cut the threads at the top, tie on the new colour and pull them through. This usually (but not always) keeps the sewing as it was and you can continue without having to readjust tensions. As I didn't do this I should probably have done a test run, but I wanted to save time so I didn't. The result was a section of stitching where the bottom thread was loose. Adjustments were made, but I wasn't about to unpick again, so the messy stitching remains. It shouldn't cause an issue, but if it does I'll cross that bridge then.

^{Those annoying loopy stitches at the bottom}

As I turned the cuffs the right way around to admire my handy work I spotted a tiny hole in the newly attached fabric...arrrrgh!

No, I was not ready to go through all of that again, so I gave it a couple of stitches to stop it spreading.

End result and an attempt at artsy photography instead of trying to clean up a well enough lit space for my camera to work.