Altered: Navy Coat

When I got this navy coat at an estate sale months ago, I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep it. I bought it (along with everything else), mostly on a whim. I think I tried this coat on and thought it fit well enough to get, even though I wasn’t necessarily happy with the entirety of its design. But for 50 cents, I wasn’t going to be super picky. As it was summer, I didn’t have an immediate need for it so it just sat in a corner for a while.

Once the weather started to cool down, I was more motivated to take a look at this coat again. I decided I liked the general shape of the coat, but disliked certain design details that I felt dated it. As is, the coat looked like it’s from the early 1980s. I didn’t like the stitching detail on the collar and the cuffs. In fact, I didn’t like the cuffs at all; I just wanted a straight sleeve, which meant I needed to sew fabric to the ends of the sleeves.

I didn’t want to try and match the navy color of the coat because I thought it was bound to be off, so I decided using a different color would be best. And while I thought a cream color would make an excellent color combination with the navy, I decided to go with black because it’s more practical. I can easily see a cream sleeve brushing against a wet dirty car and getting dark smudges all over it (and no doubt that would happen if I were to wear it). [Sigh.]

I removed the stitching on the collar and removed the cuff part of the sleeves. I just attached the black fabric to the ends of the sleeves in a way that made sense to me. It wasn’t very difficult and took an afternoon to do. Overall I’m pretty satisfied with the result; it’s a small change but I think it makes a large difference.