This was originally a post on an old forgotten blog of mine, that I thought I would repost over here for those who are interested in doll sewing techniques.

Today I’m going to show how I sew my hoods and attach them to my hoodies. I will do other collar posts in time, I’d like to show how I finish a number of different necklines.

So first up, sew your hood.

Preparing the hood

Clip the curves of the hood. You do this by snipping the seam allowance with scissors, stopping a few mm short of the stitching. (the other tutorial I mentioned is actually about clipping curves, so I’ll get on that asap for you!)

e clipping allows the fabric to move about better, as seen above. It helps give a smoother curve when you turn the fabric right side out.

Lay the hoodie flat, right side face down on the machine. Flatten out your seams and stitch down. (I realise now that I don’t actually do it this way at all!! Not sure what I was thinking when I did this tutorial! I lay the hoodie right side face up, and flatten out the seams underneath as I sew. It gives a neater top stitch, but whichever way works for you is good.)

Trim the excess seam.

The outside should look something like this:

Fold and pin the front of the hood and sew in place:

The hood is now ready to sew on to the neck and should look something like this!

Attaching the hood:
Sew both shoulder seams of your top. Turn right side out. Take your hoodie and line one side of the opening up with the centre front, right sides of the fabric together. (I do this by eye, but you can mark the centre front with chalk beforehand)

Pin it in place just at this point.

Now here comes the tricky part, and I wish my photos explained it better. Slowly sew the hoodie to the neckline, using just your hands to turn and position it along the neckline as you go. You may need to stretch it to get it into place. The main things you need to remember is that you want your opening at the centre front, and the centre back seam of your hood at the centre back of the top. (I’m only using one hand in the photo as I’m using the other to take photos of course, but normally I would be using my other hand to make sure the rest of the top is clear from the sewing needle, so that it doesn’t get caught).

As you get to the end, line up the other opening of your hoodie and pin it next to the one you’ve already sewn in place, and finish sewing.

Flip the hoodie over and clip just once near each shoulder seam.

Flip it back over to the right side, and pin the seams to the top:

Double check you’ve caught the seams with your pins like so:

Lay the top flat on your machine and top stitch the seams to the top.
I usually line the seam line up with the gap in my machine foot, so that I have an even gap of a few millimetres between the seam and the top stitching line. Once again, go slow, and feel under the hoodie as you go making sure that the seams are laying flat and being caught by the stitching.

Once again, flip the top over to the wrong side and trim the seam allowance:

And there you go, your hood is attached!

I hope that was helpful to you! Let me know if something doesn’t make sense, or if you need more photos to explain something better.

I’ll be adding more of my old tutorials in the near future, but if you have any requests, by all means let me know what you’d like to see!