Monthly Sewing Series: October

 The cool weather that we were desperately craving here in Utah has finally come knocking. It feels amazing to be able to get up and not immediately start sweating your buns off everyday. And cool weather needs warm clothing, right? So let’s jump into this month’s project. 

I purchased this crew neck sweatshirt from Walmart for about $10. Currently there isn’t a lot of red in my wardrobe, so I thought with the holidays it was a smart choice. But the plain red? Boring. In most Walmart’s there is a fabric section, and that’s where I found a bundle of fat quarters for about $7. That’s all I needed to complete the project. 

My original plan was to add a pocket to the front in one of the fabrics from the bundle. The white floral was so pretty I couldn’t pass it up. There was no real pattern to the pocket, I honestly just eyeballed it until I like the shape. 

After I cut my pocket out I hemmed all the edges by folding over 1/4” two times. Once that was finished the next task was fitting my pocket to the sweatshirt. I ended up taking off an extra 1” from the top of the pocket. When you sew the pocket on, you want to sew everything EXCEPT the two slanted portions. That’s where your hands, phone, keys, etc will go. 

Instant upgrade, am I right? You could leave it here, but I needed to remedy a problem before I could really be satisfied. I’m about 6 ft tall, which also gives me long arms. The sleeves on the sweatshirt were an inch or two shorter than i needed. At first I had no idea how I was going to remedy this problem. Then I realized I had some extra pocket fabric leftover that could be used to lengthen the sleeves. 

Eyeballing where I wanted the strip to start (because being technical isn’t my style), I cut off the bottom half of the sleeve. This is such an easy, yet cute way to alter a garment that isn’t long enough. Add the strip, reattach the sleeve, and there you have it. What do you think?