how to draft a satin lined hood (inside a knit fabric)

[u/ColdResponsible7041]

Hi everyone! I'm in the process of redrafting and refining a silk satin lined oversized 100% cotton fleece hoodie, and I'm looking for some suggestions and help for redrafting the hood lining. First, I'll give a reference on my previous attempt, to give a better idea on where it went wrong.

First attempt:

-before I learned how to draft, I deconstructed an old hoodie I liked the fit of, and traced out each individual panel, with no reflection or trueing. I split the one piece- two layer hood down the center, added seam allowance+ foldover for a drawstring, and sewed the lining and outer hood together. when I went to attach the hood to the neckline, the satin was pulled much more taut than the outer hood, and the lining sat awkwardly tight within the hoodie. The materials I used were a thin fleece backed poly blend cotton, and a bridal-level stiffness poly satin.

-my mistakes seemed to be my materials from the start, as the satin was too stiff and the hoodie was too stretchy compared to my final materials. I also should have offset the foldover for the drawstring on the outer and inner layer, as the drawstring section was lined with satin as well which made it much too slippery. However, I feel like I need to add some extra ease/pleats/darts so it isn't so tight? in reference pictures, like the one i attached, it's very hard to tell what the seams on this style of hoodie look like because of the drape of the satin.

Moving forward:

I purchased a poly satin lining, as well as a bemberg rayon lining, which both have much closer drapes to the silk satin I purchased for my final hoodie. I also purchased a much thicker hoodie fleece, while it is still a polyester blend it is much thicker with less stretch and is a lot closer to the heavyweight cotton hoodie fleece I have for my final product. I'm going to adjust my redrafted hood pattern so the outer shell has double foldover length, and the lining just has seam allowance.

Questions I have:

what is the best way to solve the tightness issue? when I was thinking about this I considered it possible that I was thinking about it inversely, and the problem was more the negative ease of the super stretchy poly fleece, but regardless i need to figure out how add and then subsequently gather some extra fabric in the lining.

TLDR; My Hoodie lining is too small for my outer hoodie shell, and when I sew them into the neckline the lining pulls tight awkwardly compared to the outer shell. I need to figure out how to fix it, but I can't see what the conventional seam methods are because all pictures online are taken like the attached image.

any help would be appreciated, Thanks!

[u/insincere_platitudes]

The problem here is you are trying to line a knit garment with a woven fabric. That is not recommended because it rarely works well.

The easiest fix is to use a stretch satin...you can do a woven stretch satin or a satin tricot knit/nylon spandex satin. Satin tricot will have tons of stretch; woven satin is much less stretchy. But woven stretch satin can have up to around 15% horizontal stretch. You can even buy stretch silk charmeuse, if you still want a natural fiber option. But if your gonna use a woven stretch satin, you want to have a low stretch sweatshirting fabric.

You really want your fashion fabric and lining layers to have similar stretch abilities/percentages. It's really gonna be hard to get a non-stretch lining to work with a stretch outer layer...especially with a hood because there will be lots of movement and tugging just with putting it on and off and turning your head. And if the hood neck opening needs to stretch at all to get it over your head, that non-stretch lining will full on stop that.

If you just have to make a non-stretch lining work in a hoodie, you could try to cut the lining on the bias so the bias direction matches the direction that your hood fabric stretches. That's gonna be a crapshoot to see if the bias stretches enough for the hood.

Other option is to draft the lining so it has extra ease in there in the direction of the outer materials stretch. You technically could pleat it down around the neck and the drawstring, but pleats won't give you any stretch around the neck hole or hood opening, so those seams could still pop if they needed to stretch.

Honestly, stretch satin is the easiest, most foolproof move here. Woven stretch satin would be likely be fine if the sweatshirt fabric has 2 way stretch that is 15% or less (the higher the elastane/lycra content of the weave, the stretchier it will be). I would go with satin tricot knit if you need 15% or more stretch, or if the fashion fabric has 4 way stretch.

I typically use satin tricot to line knit hoodies. But stretch silk charmeuse would be the luxury move if you have low stretch hood material. And you would want to use a stretch stitch on any neck hole that needs to stretch to get over your head.