Swedish Anorak mods, part 1-reducing the hood volume

I had some time to do a few of the mods. In the interest of time, I will only cover a couple of mods in each post, and do one post on just the fur ruff (which arrived yesterday, from Canada!). This blog will be on the hood mods-putting a wire stiffener in, and a hood volume reducer.
I will begin with the volume reducer. First, let me explain. The hoods on these are LARGE. They are designed to be worn with (or without) a helmet, and/or bulky headwear. So, in order to accommodate that, the hoods are voluminous. For those of us who don't wear helmets though, this creates a bit of an issue, as there is a LOT of material, and that extra space flaps around in the wind, or the hood closes up on you. Either way, something needed to be done to make it better suited for civilian use.
Disclaimer: none of these mods are my own ideas. I picked them all up reading about them elsewhere. That being said, I didn't follow any instructions on HOW to do them-I just knew what I wanted to do, looked at some pictures, and went to town. I have zero experience as a tailor, as you will see by my stitching. I either stitched by hand, using a simple thread and needle (the thread I used was heavy gauge nylon thread, a very dark green, because its all I have), or a handi-stitcher, which is a cool little machine for hemming, or, in my case, adding trim.
The first thing I did was remove both of the epaulets from each shoulder, and the crotch strap, as well as all the associated buttons. I also sewed up the ends of the tabs where they were cut (I did this with white cotton thread-the thread broke under tension, which is why I switched to the darker nylon stuff after):

 

 

 

I then took the button from the crotch strap, located the center rear of the hood, on the outside, above the seam, pinned it, then sewed it in place:

 

 

I now took the crotch strap, and pinned it roughly in the center of the hood, where the sewn in peak points down. I did this to get a rough idea of where it would sit (you will see that the crotch strap has 2 button holes-ideal for what I am doing with it):

 

 

 







From here, I sewed it into place, using what I think is some sort of lock stitch. You can kind of see the peak I was referring to, which is where I sewed this piece on:

So, the hood now has 3 volume settings. No button, it is HUGE-wearing a ski helmet with the hood over it, there is still tons of volume in it. On the first setting, its ideal to get a large tunnel in front of your face which, when the fur ruff is attached, will create a warm environment immediately in front of your face. This however has a someone limiting visibility dilemma, which is easily rectified by using the topmost button hole, which reduces the volume of the hood to a VERY manageable size:

 

So, that's it for the hood volume reducing mode. Next post will be adding the wire as a hood stiffener.