Tag Archives: Crossover Hood

The Halifax Crossover

You know when you go into a fabric shop to look for a specific type of fabric, then spot the perfect fabric for something entirely different? That’s exactly why I ended up with two metres of this thin but snuggly sweatshirt fabric! I knew it was going to make either a hooded Lane Raglan by Hey June Handmade* or a Halifax Hoodie by Hey June Handmade*, but I stashed it away in the cupboard last year as I hadn’t even attempted the Halifax at that point.

Then I spotted a notice for a Halifax sew-a-long for the last week in January, and knew it was the perfect opportunity to use that fabric. Because it is so stretchy (for some reason it stretches most across the length of the fabric rather than across the width), I decided to size down for this one. I did want to try out the crossover hood hack just to make it a little different, and also to avoid having the facing and slit at the front neck.

The hood has my neatest ever top-stitching, but when I followed the instructions and tacked it to the body, the hood didn’t even meet at the front, let alone cross! After a few “what have I done wrong?!” messages, I had a very helpful response which pointed out that the neckline can stretch out of shape quite easily; to sort it, I needed to pin the back centre neck, then cross the front by about 1/2″ and pin, then stretch the hood slightly to make it fit around the rest.

Thankfully that did the trick, and some top stitching worked to hold the seam allowance down towards the body. I used the same technique with the shoulder and sleeve seams, which will hopefully make them a little stronger too.

Using a regular straight stitch, I tacked the sleeve and side seams at 1/4″ first, just to check the fit. That seemed fine, so I left the tacking stitches in (to give the seam more strength), and used the straight stretch stitch to sew the seam at 3/8″.

It wasn’t possible to top stitch all the way down the sleeve and side seams, so I zig-zagged the seam allowance on that just to keep it tidy.

Because I didn’t use a contrasting fabric for the pocket binding and hood lining this time, I felt it needed something to liven it up a little, so I added in a funky blue and white patterned cord. The cord is a little long still, but that is a simple fix to resolve that.


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Pattern: Halifax Hoodie by Hey June Handmade*
Fabric: Fashion Fabrics