Trailblazer Hoodie Coozie

Around Thanksgiving last year I was wandering around REI, as I do, and found nearly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen: a can coozie that looked like a hoodie. Immediately I was like oh my goodness, that would be so cute with the trailblazer logo across the front, I really wish they had this in black, but the only color they had was like a khaki color. I bought it anyway, because it was so cute.

As soon as I got home I went to their website to see what other colors they had. You guys, they totally had it in black! BUT IT WAS SOLD OUT. My heart sank. Maybe shrank. And I was really sad for the rest of the day. And full transparency, even though I probably sound like a psycho, I’ve checked their online store EVERY WEEK since then, waiting for them to come back in stock, until a few weeks ago when they finally got more in (4 months later)!! I bought one immediately. And then I went back later and got another one. And then I was like what the hell, let me get a few more to give to people.

Well, the first was delivered last week and the second came yesterday, and as my husband says, I have no chill, so I got to work. I could see it all in my mind, but how was I actually going to make this come to life?!

Step 1: the hoodie strings

First off, the strings on this hoodie are gray, and I needed them to be white. I had it in my mind I was going to have to cut them and then glue in some white ones, but I totally lucked out and after untying the knots, was able to pull the string all the way out in one piece. And this meant I could thread a white piece all the way through! I went to Joann and matched the thickness and style in the ribbon section. I think you could probably also just use a thin paracord. I cut it to length, and laced it through. Side note: this went swimmingly on the first one I did. The second one not so much. One of the eyelets is much smaller, so I’m still struggling with it. I’ll get it eventually though.

Step 2: the trailblazer logo

Now that our strings are right, we need our logo. I did a lot of googling about custom iron-on designs. Everything I found was super inefficient and expensive and I needed to be able to play around with the size and what not. I put this on hold for a couple days to think about it more. And then, duh… a Cricut! I’ve been wanting one for a long time, so this gave me the excuse to finally do it, and I got the Cricut Joy from Target, which was also on sale so it made it even awesomer. Yes, I know that’s not a word. ANYWAY. Now I had the tools, and with a $5 roll of their smart iron-on, I also had the materials. I uploaded an SVG of the trailblazer logo, made it the size I thought I needed, and hit go. Here’s a link to the project if you want to customize one on your Cricut!

Step 3: putting it all together

Now I had an iron-on logo, my hoodie with the appropriate color strings, and all I needed to do was iron it on. This is where I got scared. 😂 First I tried it on that first khaki one I bought last year. I shoved a bunch of socks in it thinking that would be firm enough. That did not work. Then I stuck an empty can in it, which worked okay, but bent the can up really bad so I couldn’t use it again. When I did the first black hoodie, I stuck a small water bottle in it so I could press harder. This worked fine actually, but I melted the water bottle.

At this point, I had two done and could really gauge how it looked in action. I decided to make the logo a bit bigger for the last one. I also decided I was just going to smash it down on the table real hard and hope for the best. This was actually the best method 😂 and worked really really well!