MYO children's coat - an upcycled success?

Making a children's coat from preloved garments

From this mis-shapen ladies 1960's wool jersey jacket ...And this cotton dress (oops, after cutting it up!)This Saturday, with the help of Anjum, Production Manager at the Heba Women's Project, I set myself the task of creating my 16 month old daughter a coat from garments I had selected at a Swishing event last year and one of anjum's basic children's hooded coat patterns. Our target was to create it within 3 hours, the usual time it would take to make the coat from scratch.

Using a once overloved Adult's 1960's wool jersey coat, now slightly mis-shapen, and a pretty summer dress with a vibant print, this is how we did it:

Placing the pattern:

• I wanted keep the best details from the materials, in this case the brocade detailing and the pockets of the coat, and the cotton dress fabric for the lining. Once I decided what I wanted to use, we set about experimenting with placing the pattern pieces onto the garment to decide where they would go on the new coat. We also had to make sure we could fit all the pattern pieces onto the coat i.e. 2 x sleeves, 2 x front panels, 2 x back panels, 2 x front and back yokes, a 3 piece hood. The same was to be cut out of the lining.
• It's important when placing the pattern pieces to consider how best to use a lovely detail to it's best advantage and balance this with the need to fit in all the pieces you need. In an upcycled garment it doesn't really matter if you cut over a dart just as long as there isn't too much bulk. It all adds to it's uniqueness! If you want to be really quirky, the pocket could be at the centre back, for example, it doesn't matter, this is your creative licence and the beauty about upcycling old garments. No two will ever be the same!
• I wanted to keep the pocket abd brocade details so decided to split the pattern's front panel into two. Then, in order to get a good sized pocket I also had to cut the panels from the opposite sides of the coat, thereby using the side seams as the mid front panel seams and losing part of the pocket on the other side. We had to unpick the side seams of the jacket for this section so we could use the seam allowance and cut off the pocket on the other side.
• Next, we cut out all the pattern pieces and started constructing the garment

Fitting the front panel & lengthening the coatUnpicking the side seamUsing the right pocket for the left coat panel

Putting together the hood and lining

Resizing sleeves and cutting lining

Putting together the body

Putting together the lining

And the finished coat? That will be put up in my next post as we did't have time to finish it. It seems upcycling can take longer to make than working with new fabric!