How to Get a Drawcord Back Into a Hoodie

It normally happens in the wash. The hood goes in with both ends level and comes out with one end swallowed and the other trailing half a metre. Sometimes the whole cord is sitting at the bottom of the drum.

Rethreading takes about five minutes once you know the trick. The channel in a heavyweight hood is much wider than the cord, so this is nothing like threading a needle. The job is giving a soft cord a stiff nose to follow.

One thing first. Everything below is about adult hoodies. If the hood belongs to a child, read the section on children's sizes before you put anything back in.

Why it comes out

Cotton cord is limp, and the hood channel is a tunnel with two open ends. In a machine the hood fills with water, the drum turns, and the weight of the wet fabric drags one end in. A dryer gives the cord another long session of tumbling, so it gets another chance to travel.

We know of no published test on how drawcords migrate in a washer or dryer. That explanation is a mechanical guess that fits what we see, not a measured result, so treat it that way.

Two other causes are worth knowing. Eyelets punched wider than the cord let the tip turn and dive back inside. And a cord with no knot, bar tack or tipped end has nothing to stop it once it starts travelling.

What you need

A safety pin, 38 mm or longer. Short pins bend and lose their grip on heavy cord.
Or a plastic straw, which is faster and will not snag the lining.
Masking tape, or a short piece of clear tape.
A bodkin if you have one. It costs a few dollars at a fabric shop and beats both.

The straw method

Cut a straw to about 8 cm. Slide 2 cm of the cord end inside it and tape the join tight, so there is no step for the fabric to catch on.
Feed the straw into one eyelet, blunt end first.
Work it along with your fingers on the outside of the hood, pinching just behind the straw and pushing forward, 3 or 4 cm at a time. Do not pull from the far end. That is what folds the cord back on itself.
At the back of the hood there is usually a seam where the channel narrows. Slow down there, and keep the straw flat rather than on edge.
Bring it out the far eyelet, untape, and even the two ends against each other.

The safety pin version is the same, except you pin through the cord about 1 cm from the end and keep the pin closed the whole way. An open pin inside a hood channel will find the lining, and a hole in the lining is a worse job than the one you started with.

If it jams

Stop pushing. In our experience a jam is nearly always the cord doubling back inside the channel, and force turns a small fold into a knot. Pull the whole thing out, lay the hood flat, smooth the channel with your palm, and start again.

If the tip has frayed into a mop, trim it square and wrap 1 cm of tape round it before it goes near the eyelet.

Know what the cord is made of

The fix for a frayed end depends on the fibre, and the cord is not always the same fibre as the hoodie.

Cotton and polyester behave differently under heat. A thermal study of cotton and polyester fabrics by Chaudhari and colleagues at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda reports that cotton cellulose decomposes below 300°C, while polyester melts and flows above 260°C. That is why a polyester cord end can be fused and a cotton one cannot. Heat a cotton tip and you get char, not a seal. So for cotton, tape or a few stitches of thread is the honest fix.

Do not count on the care label to tell you which you have. Canada's Textile Labelling and Advertising Regulations define "findings" as textile parts added for a functional purpose that differ in fibre content from the garment, and list binding, tape and thread among them. Section 39 says the garment's fibre content is shown exclusive of the findings, and the findings' own content may be shown, not that it must be. The regulations do not name drawcords, but a cord in a different fibre from the body looks like a finding, so a label reading 100% cotton may only be describing the fleece.

If the label is silent, ask the maker.

Children's hoodies are different

Here the advice changes, and it comes from the regulator rather than from us.

Health Canada's danger to human health or safety assessment for children's upper outerwear with drawstrings says that children's upper outerwear in sizes newborn to 12 should not have drawstrings in the hood and neck area, because they can catch on things and strangle. The assessment counts 16 Canadian reports between 1988 and 2010, including three deaths. It draws on ASTM F1816, Standard Safety Specification for Drawstrings on Children's Upper Outerwear, which covers hood and neck drawstrings in sizes 2T to 12 and waist and bottom drawstrings in sizes 2T to 16.

Health Canada also notes that, under the ASTM criteria, drawstrings should have no toggles, knots or other attachments at the free ends. The knot trick further down is for adult garments only. If a child's hood has lost its cord, the simplest thing is to leave it out.

Stop it happening again

Tie a loose overhand knot in each end, about 3 cm in from the tip. It sits outside the eyelet and cannot pass through. Adult hoodies only, for the reason above.
Before a wash, tie the two ends together in one bow at the front of the hood.
Wash inside out, cold, on a short cycle, then hang it to dry. The full routine is in how to wash a hoodie without shrinking it and on our care page.
Skip the dryer. The extra tumbling gives the cord more chances to travel.

None of this is precious work. A drawcord is a length of braid in a fabric tunnel, and the only real skill is patience at the back seam. Knot the ends once and you will probably never do it again.

If the cord is past saving, most fabric shops sell flat cotton braid by the metre. Under the same regulations, narrow fabrics sold off a spool or bolt are labelled for fibre content on the spool, the bolt end or a nearby sign, so the fibre should be easy to check before you buy. Measure the old one, add 10 cm, cut. If you are unsure whether your hoodie counts as heavy, what actually counts as a heavyweight hoodie explains the numbers.

Sources

Health Canada. Danger to human health or safety assessment for children's upper outerwear with drawstrings. Last updated 2023. canada.ca
ASTM International. ASTM F1816-18, Standard Safety Specification for Drawstrings on Children's Upper Outerwear. 2018, reapproved 2024 as F1816-18R24. store.astm.org
Government of Canada. Textile Labelling and Advertising Regulations, C.R.C., c. 1551, sections 19, 25 and 39. Justice Laws Website. laws-lois.justice.gc.ca
Chaudhari, S. B., Patel, P. N., Mandot, A. A. and Patel, B. H. Studies on thermal degradation behavior of nano silica loaded cotton and polyester fabrics. arXiv preprint 1706.04777, 2017. arxiv.org