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A snowboarding garment for the Midwest.

With bitter cold winters and a short-but-sweet early year season, Midwest snowsports offer a range of riding conditions. A time beloved by many is the late-winter/early spring warming period, when a popular option is to wear a hoodie or long-sleeved shirt instead of a riding jacket. This project is a response to that temperamental time of the season, offering an in-between for the hoodie and the cotton tee.

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Research

This project was my first real foray into machine sewing and was relatively early in my product design journey (unfortunately, that means sparser documentation as well). Luckily, I have some experience making patterns for leather goods, so that did translate a bit. Nevertheless, garments are a completely different beast. With that said, I began to look into what I would need to make a shirt. There has been a great deal of work on shirt fit and construction, and given the time constraints of this project, I chose to stand on the shoulders of giants in that area. An early discovery was the ability to duplicate a pattern from a preexisting item; I used that technique to cut up an old shirt and create a paper pattern on newsprint. See artist depiction below:

The second most important thing to establish early on (after some sewing competency) was material. The most common materials for snowboard outerwear are, in no particular order:

• Polyester
• Nylon
• GORE-TEX (membrane layer, usually laminated to one of the above)
• Merino Wool
• Cotton

Polyester and Nylon don’t usually feel great against the skin, but are dominant, durable materials in the winter outerwear category, primarily for shells. GORE-TEX overtakes in the high-end segment but has the same skin-contact issues as the aforementioned materials. Cotton is a classic, but it’s notorious for trapping moisture. When you’re sweating on the hill, you don’t want that sweat to remain trapped.

I’ve left merino wool last because it’s the material that’s moving forward. It’s popular in base layers already for good reason. It’s great at moisture regulation – merino fibers quickly wick sweat and remove it from the skin before quickly spreading the moisture internally. This leaves the surface drier, creating a buffer between the cool air and the wearer’s warmth.

Merino is great for a Midwest scenario.

Late in the season, temperatures typically range from 30 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit. After riding in the sun for a bit, you’re ready for some airflow. Something heavy is unnecessary, and there’s an opportunity to reduce the complexity of the technical layering systems that permeate mid-season riding while leaning into snowboard culture.

Enter: oversized.

Oversized clothing in snowboarding has roots in skate and surf culture. The original cultural role was not oriented to performance, but the fit has been embraced since. One reason oversized clothing may have stuck around is that it lets you layer. A common solution for mid-temps now is the hoodie under an oversized shirt, or a flannel over top (or both). A heavier tee could bridge the gap and condense the garments into one, while still allowing the mobility of an oversized fit.

Another critical aspect of snowboard wear is the steeze. Steeze is essentially the style and effortlessness of a rider, and it’s present in the outfit and the smoothness of your technique. It’s all about making hard things look easy, and an oversized outfit flows and trails in the wind. Not only will you not have to worry about binding up in your jacket during a spin, but the billowing jacket will also conceal any small tremors in your torso and arms that could show as stiffness on camera (action cameras are increasingly popular, especially in the terrain park). By extension, there is an awareness of external perception on the hill more than ever. Especially at a larger resort, you’ll be forgiven for thinking the lift line is actually a Helly Hanson runway demo. For context:

Personally, I love the street and resort aesthetics. You’ll see, though, that even performance techwear has adopted oversized fit. Burton, among others, has expanded or modified its range to accommodate the desire for oversized offerings. So, there is a market for hybrid urban/tech outerwear. A mid-temperature tee can add some steeze and technical performance to a tried-and-true piece of clothing for urban and park snowboarders.

With a level of conceptual validation, I could move forward to ideation.

Ideation

These ideas are all centered around the pocket tee. I began with it because it’s a simple garment enhanced by one small detail, and I carried that idea across all of the concepts. The first image shows a shirt with a removable hood, which adds more flexibility for different temperatures.

After that, I explored a tag detail. With my previous experience in leatherwork, I considered saddle stitching a stamped leather patch. Two slides show variations of a pocket detail or tag variation. Front V.3 is notable for its leather binding along the top edge of the pocket for reinforcement – it’s a functional and stylistic detail.

Finally, a curveball, Searching for Life. This concept was driven by a desire to make something more expressive. Ultimately, something more restrained was selected, but this design was done based on a cosmic theme. I don’t like to necessarily exclude any ideas that come up during ideation. In this case, the principle of the idea (a small accent on an unadorned piece) informed the final design.

Design and Fabrication

For this project, most of the visual design was fleshed out in the ideation phase. The design of the ‘finished’ prototype, presented as the final version on this page, is largely informed by a response to the material during fabrication. The rolled edges of the pocket were a real-time decision, based on observation of the hems; the thick wool forms a great bead with a close stitch along the edge. I pushed that as far as I could with the pocket to create a tight, controlled bead that accentuates and offsets the size of the stamped leather patch.

Unfortunately, I do not have any photographs of the shirt’s fabrication. The process is roughly as follows:

1. Create a pattern from an old shirt
   • Cut apart the shirt at the seams
   • Trace the cut-out pieces
2. Transfer pattern shapes onto fabric with tailor’s chalk
3. Cut shapes out with scissors and a rotary cutter
4. Pin panels together and sew
5. Create pocket
   • Cut the rectangle to size
   • Cut the polyester binding strip
   • Sew binding to the pocket
6. Create a leather patch
   • Cut leather with a round knife
   • Stamp with a brass stamp
   • Bevel edges
   • Burnish edges
   • Mark stitch lines
   • Punch stitching holes with pricking irons
   • Clamp leather and saddle stitch by hand
7. Attach the leather to the pocket, and the pocket to the front of the shirt

The part that caught me off guard as a first-time shirtmaker is the fabric’s bias. Every woven fabric will have a bias, that is, different properties at a 45-degree angle to the weave. What I didn’t know was that the ribbing I should have ordered was far stretchier than my wool would ever be on the bias. This meant that my apparent frugality had cost me a flexible collar. Thus, the prototype is unintentionally better suited to individuals with smaller-than-average head circumferences… the collar also despises a flat presentation.

Reflection

This snowboarding shirt has a special place in my heart as one of the first things I prototyped in my design journey. I appreciated learning about garment construction by immersing myself in the process. Aside from the obvious experience with the collar, this opportunity allowed me to gain practice with the sewing machine – I learned many tricks for cutting, marking, and handling fabric over the course of the project. If I were to attempt this again, I would start by deconstructing more shirts to gain a greater understanding of the differences between them and hone in on the fine details of their construction.

Overall, the prototype’s fit is my biggest gripe. It does not fit like the shirt it was based on, and I’m sure some of that comes down to material difference. I would like to learn more about the causes of the discrepancies and address them in a future iteration.