Recently I was given a beautiful but oversized 80’s wool/cashmere two toned coat by a lady I instruct at my gym. She knows I am a sewer and thought that if I didn’t fancy the coat that I could use the fabric and transform it and refashion it into something else. A great challenge, how could I say no to such a lovely gesture?
At first I thought I could just cut it at the waist and make a little cropped jacket but the shoulders were very wide and I wasn’t sure it would really work. My best option was to just rip it apart and use the fabric laid out with a pattern. Luckily I have a very big pattern stash so it wasn’t hard to find one! I chose a two toned skirt Vogue 8928 semi-fitted lined skirt with a side front slit. The coat was lined so this pattern was perfect as it had the two toned fabrics and the lining which I could use.
Fitting the pattern onto the fabric proved a little challenging and I had to be very creative laying it out to fit onto the salvaged fabric but eventually it worked out. As this coat was a designer coat and I’m sure was very expensive at the time I decided I would make sure I tailor tacked, thread traced and basted every thing before starting.
The pattern itself was fairly easy to sew up although I found the instructions a little confusing. As I am a fairly experienced sewer I worked them out but it’s a bit misleading as it’s called an “easy options” pattern. There were a lot of darts and the lining was a pain in the butt! I could not get it to sit nicely on the split seam. I trimmed the seam, under stitched and pressed but it just wouldn’t sit neatly. I seam ripped the lining seam open and made the lining a bit smaller which fixed it a little bit but it’s still not perfect, you can still see the lining poking out. Also, when I tried it on I was a bit shocked at how high the split is! It does look high on the pattern envelope but I wasn’t quite expecting that high. I topstitched it down to prevent an accidental sneak peak at my underwear. :0 I might have to purchase a nice pair of woollen stockings to cover up a little.
While I was sewing the skirt, I found some emerald colour satin fabric in my stash that looked like it would match the olive colour in the skirt perfectly. I found another blouse pattern in my stash Simplicity 1467 (a top, jacket, pants and skirt pattern) which I thought would work really well. It is sleeveless with a gathered yoke and button closure at the back neck, simple. It was very easy to sew up and I am really happy with it. Highly recommend it and I really want to make up the jacket and pants in this pattern as well.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with my little re fashion project. I kind of wish the skirt split wasn’t so high but it’s too late now so I’ll just have to show off my pins!
