Carefree Coat with Scarf

October's challenge in the Carefree Clothes for Girls Sewalong was a woolen coat with knitted scarf.  I'd been thinking about this one for awhile, and planned on cutting up an old blazer of mine (not worn in forever...)  Chocolate brown, woolly and warm - perfect for Autumn, perfect for Eliza.

In my case, this project could have EASILY been called "So, You Think You Can Re-Purpose?"

I started out by removing the acetate lining -- and enjoyed this very much, actually.  I'd never seen the inner workings of a shoulder pad before:

Moving on in my cloud of  this-is-so-interesting!  work, I quickly realized why the lining had been there in the first place: 

Pockets.  Lots and Lots of Pockets.

The next cold hard fact to come to the surface:  all those pre-existing seams would interfere with cutting according to the pattern.  I had to think about this muddle for at least a day.

I ended up sewing the pattern pieces together and using that as one giant pattern, to minimize cutting: 

cut, flip over, cut again on the other half.....

The problem of the missing lining was still there - taunting me - and at this point, even coffee couldn't comfort me. 

So, I moved to wine.  :-)

And came up with a pinch-hit lining method of basting a cotton lining in brown check onto the entire coat piece before sealing everything into hemmed edges.  Working late at night ....shown here is the back (middle) and two front pieces (sides) with raglan cut-outs for the sleeves.

Back in the daylight, I used snaps to close the front....

....added a tab for hanging up by the neck;  neckline is trimmed in copper silk cut on the bias from an old blouse of mine...

....and put two small silk flowers on the sleeves where buttons had previously been; same copper silk blouse sourcing ;-)

Now we come to the scarf.   I'm a knitter, and figured the scarf would be really easy.....however, my first scarf was so wild-cavewoman in feeling,  I couldn't allow it to stay wrapped around my child's neck:

Right.....now I know why that yarn was on sale.

So, I switched out to PINK and used cotton yarn (Adrienne Vittadini Camilla) that had once been a toddler shrug for Eliza:

I sold this switch to her as a safer, less-nibbly alternative for the horses -- she had said this brown jacket was her pick for riding....the barn jacket 'smells' apparently.  

I'm not a huge fan of garter stitch, but it's No. 1 for going quickly and gave me a good backdrop for using one of my hoarded ceramic buttons from Norway:

Plus, my little monkey likes it - and that means we are both happy.

:-)