A Coat for the Cold

Today is the first truly cold day of the year for Nebraska (pretty good to get all the way to the end of November.) Yesterday, a front blew across the plains, bringing with it cold–and for some parts of Nebraska, snow.

For my part, I’m thankful that amidst the busyness of the last month or so, I’ve had opportunity to make alterations on my coat so that I have a nice, snazzy, warm winter coat.

New coat

Once upon a time, this coat was double breasted style in a size much too big for me. My sister was giving it away–and I had it along with several items in the back of my car to take to a used store drop-off. For whatever reason (probably that it wasn’t bagged like the other items), I failed to put it in the drop-off and ended up taking it home.

Eventually I moved it to my trunk, figuring it would be handy if I got stranded somewhere without a coat. If that were to happen, who cares that it’s much too big for me and in a style that is completely unflattering to my figure?

Then I started hankering after a nice coat–a real working woman’s coat rather than the hand-me-down parkas and sweaters I’ve been cobbling together. The thing is, coats can be expensive–and I’m cheap.

That’s when I remembered the coat I had sitting in my trunk.

I thought, “I wonder if I could alter that.”

Now realize, I’m pretty bold when it comes to crafting–but tailoring is not really my forte. It’s taken me a long time to get comfortable creating clothing–and I’m still not sure that I’m really there.

But the lure of saving a hundred bucks was too much to pass up–so I took out my seam ripper and got ripping. Double breast to single breast, remove an eight inch panel from either side of the coat, recut the sleeves and sew them back on, re-attach the buttons, figure out how to deal with that pesky lining.

Scary? Yes.

But the results are worth it. For pennies (in thread) and four or five hours worth of work (several of which I did while nominally watching a football game), I have a “brand new” coat for the cold.