Tuesday, January 19, 2010

2 Old coats = 1 "New" coat


Here in Northern MN our winters are pretty chilly and warm winter coats are quite essential! Mara (my oldest) had been given several coats but they started wearing out, One look pretty bad on the outside, another one's zipper only worked some of the time (and was getting a bit small) and another one was really to lightweight for winter wear and also had a non-working zipper. I thought about going out and buying a new coat but then I realized I would have all these non-working coats still on my hands and I didn't want to just throw them away.

So I decided to try to make do and figured out how to use what we have.

I decided to combine these two coats. The one on the left was looking pretty nasty but it was pretty warm and had a good zipper. The coat on the right looked good but was two thin for winter and had the broken zipper.

  My methods for combining them were not very professional but it was very quick but it worked. I simply cut (I was going to seam rip but decided it would look all right to cut) the zipper out of the black one. Then I placed the black coat over the blue one and sewed the fronts together all along the zipper (on both sides so the zipper still works). Then I worked a bit to make the bottoms fit together and I sewed it together there as well. That is actually all I have done so far and it is working fine. In the future I might sew the ends of the sleeves together and around the collar area but for now it works.

 Sorry the pictures isn't that great but it does look okay and it is super warm! And I am happy to have been able to make the old coats usable again rather than just throw them away.
This is linked to DIY day at A Soft Place to Land and to Reinvented.


12 comments:

Unknown said...

Wow, you are such a resourceful mom! I would have never thought to do this, what a great idea! Thanks for linking up.

Jackie said...

What a good idea. I bet the original winter coat is even warmer with the addition of the light jacket. Great job for being so resourceful!

DeeAnna said...

What a great way to re-purpose!

Nola said...

Wow, great job! That looks great!

Angie Holden said...

Great idea -- I never would have thought of that!

Abbi said...

Thanks everybody! It really ended up being a quite simple project for which I was happy!

Jane said...

Your daughter is very cute in her "new" coat. I love when a plan comes together like that.

Dawn said...

Wow, what a great idea! I am going to have to remember this one for future reference!

Joyeful said...

Wow! That is ingenious!!! I would never have thought of that! It looks great!

Susan said...

Would of never thought of it. Now I have to see what I have around in old coats.

Heather Anne said...

Great idea - I hate replacing zippers in coats - total pain! My mum wonders how American children survive winter - the coats in the stores are so light and not warm compared with the coats in the stores in Canada - even if they are the same brand! She buys our children coats at her thrift store in Canada and brings them down - even though OH isn't very cold, we do have some crisp days and they like to play outside for hours, so I really appreciate their warm gear - even if they don't! Sometimes if she can't find nice coats we buy Land's End Overstocks and they are toasty warm too!

Michelle said...

How thrifty!

LinkWithin

Blog Widget by LinkWithin