Kid Coat

I haven’t written a post in ages. But making a coat warrants a post. Even if it’s a kid’s coat, because I have been trying to sew one for YEARS! Warning: Attempting to make a coat for your picky husband, as the first one ever, may not result in a finished coat. 😝

But, I like failure. You see, when we fail at something, we tend to really learn the next time. For me, I needed to step back from the adult coat and try again, at a smaller scale. It STILL took me over a month to make, but I wasn’t in a hurry. We’re talkin slooooooow fashion here!

First thing I needed was fabric. Now, coating fabric is not cheap. And I didn’t want an expensive lesson. So when my daughter’s preK church was putting together a winter thrift store last year, I went in there determined to find some good coats to upcycle. I walked out with 3 potential future projects and a handful of Hot Wheels for my daughter (she likes having them ride around and park in spots where I can trip, no big deal). And yes, I have been planning this for a year now.

Back to the coat. Here is the original. I remembered to take a picture of the before; usually I just dive in and 30 minutes later realize that I should have taken a picture. It’s a large black wool and polyester blend and is super soft. 

Pattern was picked in September of this year, and signed off by my cute 5 year old client, Lilli. She knows what she wants and is not afraid to not wear what she does not like. My solution, involve her in all the steps possible! We picked out Bella Sunshine’s Gabriella’s Winter Coat. I liked the front A-line dress look. But didn’t care for all the party in the back look. I’m utilitarian in many regards and I knew we’d both fuss over the amount of fabric in the back once done. So we picked it, knowing there would be modifications but mostly simple ones. 

Pattern Modifications 

Sleeves: Raised the armscye by 1/4″ on both lining and outer bodice pieces. 

Back skirt: I tried the slash and reduce method to the back skirt, but it wasn’t looking right. When I started doing the embroidery design for the front, an idea came to me of putting the front center and side skirt pieces together and making the back skirt with that, minus seam allowance! A quick muslin of the skirt showed me it would work.

Hood: At the very end, like I was done with my embroidery and constructing the outer shell end, Lilli decided she wanted a hood too. Luckily, there is a tutorial in the coat’s sew-along on Bella Sunshine’s website, AND more importantly fabric for it. 

This was actually a blessing in disguise. One of my front piece embroidery wasn’t lining up at the side seams and I was debating on what to do. Adding the hood, meant more embroidery anyway, so the I re-cut a new front center and side panel along with the hood pieces and started over.

I wanted the hood to stay on her head without any closures. Studying a hooded coat I owned, I learned that a deep facing would give enough structure. I  made the facing 2″ deep not including seam allowance, and attached to faux fur I had from this project.  

Design Work

Now we talk about the fun part! Giving a child who loves color, a black peacoat, seemed like a bad decision. I spent some time looking at coat embroideries, then deciding I didn’t like any of those, looked around for Indian border embroideries.

As I mentioned earlier, Lilli was making decisions on this coat with me. I presented her with a few embroidery designs that I could do in a normal amount of time. And she got to pick one, this is the inspiration. I drew it out on tracing paper to my liking, than transferred to water soluble stabilizer. Note for future, don’t use Frixion pens on water soluble stabilizer, the pen has water and wrinkles the stabilizer.

Finally, bringing out my embroidery thread, Lilli got to pick out colors for each of the design elements. Some of the colors she picked, I would not have picked, had I done this on my own. Glad to have gotten her input.

She is super proud of how it turned out. And to be honest, I would not have picked all the colors she did, but it came together beautifully. 

Coat Construction

Most of the construction was straightforward, however, I added some steps, to learn/practice certain things and to make the coat even better. 

Seams – all seams were pressed open and tacked down with a catch stitch to reduce bulk

Sleeves – added sleeve head to keep the sleeve in shape. See how the first one droops and the second doesn’t? It’s subtle but makes a difference overall. It gets sewed on to the sleeve seam allowance.

Shoulders – Similarly, added tiny shoulder pads for a bit more support and structure. It gets sewed on to the shoulder seam allowance.

Hem – the original instructions called for the hem facing to be added to the skirt lining and then sewed to the outer shell and topstitched. I like clean lines and preferred not to topstitch. 

So instead, I added the hem facing to the outer shell and understitched it up. It was a little tricky sewing the hem facing to the front facing, then attaching it to the lining. 

Neck – I found out what the max layers are for my machine, making this coat! 8 layers of wool! There are sections that I had to hand stitch because the machine just wouldn’t go through it. It was at the neck where the collar stand, hood, outer shell and back facing came together. 

Lining – Taking an inventory through my stash, I found two fabrics that would go together nicely. The bodice, I wanted to be cotton, because I wanted to quilt it for extra warmth. My child doesn’t like sweaters much, so I have to build in the layers. The quilt batting was cut offs from previous quilts that I pieced together under the fabric. Topstitching kept the bulk down at the seams.

I opted to make an opening in one of the sleeves instead of the skirt lining, like the instructions suggested. One thing I would have liked in the construction was to leave an opening for bagging, rather than unpicking afterwards. 

Buttonholes – Testing buttonholes does not always guarantee it will work on the garment. As I, unfortunately, found out. After 5 tries, I resorted to hand stitch ones instead. Next time, I’ll do self bound buttonholes. It’s a bit more work but it will be a nice clean look. Here’s the video I found to help me.

Buttons – I feel like every part of this coat has a story to it. And the buttons themselves were no different. Original plan was to use the buttons that came with the coat. But I needed 6, and the original coat had only 5. The ones in my stash just didn’t do justice to the coat so I went searching. Learning how expensive 6 nice looking buttons could be, I started looking for alternatives – enter vintage buttons. I showed a handful of them to Lilli, and she had her heart set on a set that had only 5 buttons in the size I was looking for but 6 in a smaller size. Frantically trying to reach out to the Etsy seller, I asked if she had any other buttons that looked similar. She, Nicole of Brizel Buttons, said she would look right into it. She found us another gorgeous set of buttons, made a new listing and shipped it all in one day! I got both the buttons that had 6 in a smaller size and the new set that Nicole had found, just in case. And I’m glad I did. Lilli picked the smaller sea blue ones that she had wanted in the first place.

All in all, I took my time adding the little details to make this coat a really good one. And it all paid off. My daughter is super excited to wear it and that makes it all worth it. Have you made a coat before? Do you have tips and tricks you use? I’d love to hear them.