Addy's Winter Coat

Do you ever start off a project by telling yourself that you'll save money in the long run? Yeah, me too. And that's exactly how Addy's winter  coat started out. I already had the perfect pattern, so all I needed was fabric! Well, 2 yards of Amy Butler's Love (I used water bouquet in midnight) plus a yard of wool batting plus 1.5 yards of flurr later, and I spent more than a jacket at Old Navy would have cost. But it was gonna be cute, I told myself.

The sewing went smooth enough. The pattern is very simple and straightforward, and it accommodated the bulk of the batting and fuzzy lining very well. I did quilt the batting and outer material before cutting the pieces, so that helped. And I think I inhaled a limited amount of the pink fluffy lining.

Addy blowing a bubble (use your imagination a bit)

 Admiring herself in the mirror

 And this is her "standing still"

I really like the hood. I always feel warmer in a jacket that has a hood.

As you can tell in most of these photos, the sleeves are long. They are meant to be turned up, but the fabric that I chose for the lining does not wear well at all. In fact, I was going to turn up 1 sleeve just for a photo, but it looked too awful!

I added a few coordinating prints for the button loops and made covered buttons. It turns out, covered buttons aren't very sturdy. So by the time I remembered to take photos of the jacket, they had fallen off. I rummaged through my buttons looking for 3 large, matching buttons and these purple ones are what I ended up with. I don't love them, in fact I sort of hate them. But Addy sort of hates wearing this jacket, so why waste good buttons?

Notice the pink buttons inside? I sewed those to the inside while at the same time sewing the purple buttons to the outside. Kids are rough with their things, and I didn't want to find tears in the jacket for overzealous buttoning/unbuttoning.

I love how it turned out, aside from the fact that the lining material does not wear well. As I mentioned, Addy isn't as crazy about it, though. I bought her a cheap fleece and puffy coat from Old Navy so that she could play outside, but those seem to be her coats of choice most days. When she does wear it, she looks pretty darn cute, though!

Next year I think I'll go with a store-bought winter jacket. But this pattern is really great for a spring/fall jacket, so I'm sure I'll be making more of them! (You can see here how I used this pattern for Addy's spring jacket last year.)