49-Cent Friday: Ugly Coat Refashion: Part Two

Is it really Friday again?

Wow, this week went by fast.

For today’s 49-Cent Friday Refashion, I decided to finish my ugly coat (at least it used to be).

Need a reminder? Take another look at the before pic.

Kinda ugly

Where did we last leave off?

Oh yes, I had finished sewing the bottom ruffle along the waist.

The next step was to lengthen the sleeves (because my arms are quite long and my coat sleeves never seem long enough)!

To accomplish this, I used a scrap of the material that was cut off the coat and made 2 skinny strips out of it. I’ll be using these to make cute ruffles on my sleeves.

2 long strips

The first thing I did to the strips was fold over one side and pin…

See?

Then sew.

Whirrrr

Now to make these strips into ruffles, I used the same technique (via Bandy Canyon) that I used to make the ruffle on the waist of the coat (see Ugly Coat Refashion: Part One).

You can see in the following pictures how you fold the strip back and forth around the sleeve (right sides together).

Like this.

After pinning it just right, sew it all around!

Once my sleeves were all finished, I got busy making a ruffle for the front of the coat.
I started by using one of the strips I had cut off from the bottom of the coat, folded it over (wrong sides together) and ran it through my sewing machine.

See what I mean?

After it was sewn together, it looked like this…

All coiled up and ready to attack…like a snake!

I wanted to use that strip of material to make a pleated ruffle to add onto the button placket part of the front of the coat.
I used my long strip of fabric and pleated and pinned it along the front flap of the coat like so…

Such pretty pleats.

Here comes the painful part.

Because the strip of fabric was so thick, and folding it back and forth on top of itself just made it that much thicker, I could barely pin it to the coat and keep the pins from falling out.

There was no way this would even fit under my sewing machine, so I had to hand sew the whole thing, which left my fingers sore and calloused by the time I was finished (not to mention that I kept mistaking my fingertips for a pin cushion).

I made sure to use this heavy-duty upholstery thread…

Heavy Duty!

To sew the ruffle on, I used a whip stitch and sewed it to the inside of the button flap.

Then I went over it again from the front using a hidden stitch (so it wouldn’t be seen).

Here’s the finished look…

Front view

View from the back.

I didn’t want to wear this coat without a liner in it (that wouldn’t be very comfortable), so I hand stitched the liner back in (after shortening it to match the new length of the coat).

I also decided to hand stitch it, so that the stitches wouldn’t show from the front of the coat.

Smooth and silky

The coat was looking pretty snazzy at this point, but there was just one more thing I wanted to add to finish the look.

I had another strip of material that I ironed nice and flat (making sure to use lots of steam).

Nice flat strip

After hemming the sides under, I folded the strip in half (right sides together) and sewed.

Like this.

After turning it right side out, it looked like this.

See?

Using the same buttons that I used on the front of the coat, I attached this flap thingy (what the heck are these things called anyway?) like so…

Cute back huh?!

And that’s it! All done!

What do ya’ think?

So for 49-cents, I turned this ugly thing…

Before

…into this cute coat…

After

Now I’ll have something green to wear for St. Patrick’s Day!

I want to say thank you to all of you who offered your thoughts and advice about this refashion. The truth is that I couldn’t have made it without your help, and if anything I believe that this was a group project.

You guys rock!

Have a great weekend!

This post was featured on…

and linked up to…

About these ads

Single Post Navigation

← Older Entry

Newer Entry →