Making & Creating

How to Use Crochet to Alter a Jacket

Dear Crochet Lover,

Handmade is one of my favorite words. If it were possible I would likely attempt to make everything in my life but alas, it is not possible. To make all my dishes, all my clothes, all my furniture, well, time just does not allow for that. I can’t make it all so of course I have plenty of mass produced items around. What’s the next best thing to making an item? Making it my own one-of-a-kind version.

The inspiration for this project actually began with a problem to solve. A few years ago I bought this inexpensive fleece jacket for the cooler weather. It’s light enough that I don’t get annoyed by its bulk when running errands but warm enough to break the chill of the winter air in my part of the world.

The problem arose when I realized after wearing it for a while that the cuff on the sleeves irritated me. They were only sewn down at the seam and then with one little tacking stitch on the opposite side. This design allowed the areas that weren’t tacked down to constantly come uncuffed. If something is cuffed it should stay cuffed, right?

I put up with it for a season or two but this year I decided I’d had enough. Fixing the problem could’ve been simply adding more tacking stitches but why not create something that not only fixes the irritation but also makes this useful little jacket a bit more custom.

My initial plan was to design an embroidery plan that would strategically keep the cuffs in place.

I went to get some embroidery floss that I didn’t have in my stash. While perusing the isles that I hadn’t planned on going down I came to a screeching halt.

There was a beautiful purpley-red with a smattering of additional colors that caught my eye. I loved this yarn so much that I decided to change my embroidery plan altogether.

There were only 2 skeins left so I snatched them up, promptly paid, and returned home to work up my new plan.

Follow along as I show you how I refashioned my jacket sleeves to add some original detail and get rid of the annoying flopping cuffs.

You can also watch the video ➡ to see my process. And if you would like to know the yarn and tools used in this project you can find them here.

To begin I needed to decide how much of the sleeve I wanted to replace. I ended up cutting off 7 inches. I was going for ¼ or so of the sleeve being recreated and leaving ¾ or so of the original.

Before cutting I marked the line where I wanted the new sleeve section to begin and then cut the original sleeve about ½ inch longer.

The next step would be to create an anchoring row for the crochet to attach to. Since this yarn is super bulky I didn’t want to machine sew to attach the new section, instead I created the anchoring row with embroidery floss and chain stitched around on the line.

I also added some glue or Fray Check to reinforce all the knots. Then continued on by sewing the edge down with the wrong sides together making sure that the chain stitched row remains on the edge of the sleeve.

To begin the crochet portion of the sleeve I start at the seam and work a slip stitch row around with a size J hook. I ended up skipping a chain between each stitch since this yarn was so heavy.

At the end of this row and all rows after, I chain 1 and turn. I chose to just work the sleeve back and forth but you could just as easily work in the round. If working in the round, make sure to use a marker to keep track of the first stitch in each round.

For the rest of the sleeve I worked a single crochet stitch for 12 rows. The unassuming single crochet stitch gave me a thickness that was similar to my jacket without being too open like many other stitches I tried beforehand.

Once I was done with the crocheting I cut the yarn leaving a long tail then sewed up the seams and wove in the ends of the yarn. You can see that in action in the video above!

To add a subtle edging I wrapped the front and back loops of the last row with the same yarn. It gave an understated binding effect. For each stitch I wrapped 2-3 times depending on what it needed to look as solid as possible. I love how it turned out!

I did go back and hand sew the first slip stitch row to the sleeves just to give some added strength and support the chained row. It may have been fine without that last step but I didn’t want to chance it.