DIY Hooded Vest Part 1

Hey everyone! Today is going to be the first installment of a two part project I started a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to put into the project just yet, but hopefully I'll be able to finish it within the next few weeks.

So, every year in May there is a Zombie March in Boston, MA that I absolutely love. The past few years that I've attended, I've been dressed as a zombie with the people that I go with but this year, one of my friends and I decided that we wanted to go as survivors instead of zombies and have been piecing together costumes together bit by bit.

My friend had bought an awesome cowl hood (which can be found here) and vest (here) from Etsy.

Unfortunately, not all of us can afford to spend that kind of money on super awesome costumes and just have to try to do it ourselves, so here's the beginning of my step by step process to make a hooded vest from an old pull over hoodie!

Step One – Rip off the sleeves. I plan to hem these again so that they aren't so wide and don't have that 80's padded-shoulder look to them anymore later on. Also, I ripped the front pocket off and the bottom elastic.

Step Two – Lay flat and find the center. Once the hoodie is flattened, measure from one side to the other side, divide by two and mark the center. I made three marks: one by the neckline, one in the middle of the belly-area, and another at the bottom. Connect the marks with a ruler and draw a straight line all the way down the front. Then, here's the scary part, cut down the center line.

After ripping off the sleeves and drawing the line.

Step Three – (Optional) I tried a few ways to try to get the design off of the hoodie, but none of them really worked very well. I tried the nail polish remover trick, which got a small part of the design to come up, but not enough to actually make it go away. I then tried to scrap it off (while it was soft) with a pocket knife. In the end, I just decided that I would cover up the entire design with a patch of some sort after dying the fabric.

Step Four – (Also optional) My hoodie was a deep maroon color, so I decided to try to bleach out a bit of the color before dying it black. I don't want the black to be the blackest black (since I'm trying to look post-apocalyptic and worn) so I thought this step might lighten it up in the end. Conversely, it could make the fabric soak up more dye and make it darker in the end, but I suppose we'll see when I get to it.

After being bleached to hell three times.. still pinkish.

Step Five – Line the inside of the hoodie. I hate the pill-y look hoodies get after being worn for a while and since the fabric folds over a bit where the two sides meet in the front, I decided I would cover it up. I took an old t-shirt and repeated Step One and Two, then pinned it inside the hoodie as the lining.

Unfortunately, this is all I've been able to accomplish so far, but stay tuned for Part Two!