Cute Altered Trench Coat

I recently posted a teaser about a trench coat I found at goodwill. You can see it and my before picture here.

And here's my finished product!

Materials:
10" of Black Material that matches your coat
32" of scallopped black lace
10 3/4" D-rings
Ribbon
Buttons

Directions:

{Taking in the Armpits}
First try your jacket on and see how much the sleeves need to be brought in. Mark it however is best for you, in the armpit, where it would be the most to take in.

Pull your lining away from your jacket, and have your jacket inside out. You may have to cut some of the ties from the jacket and lining. I only cut the ones from the armpit, and you can replace them later. If it's easy enough I would recommend taking out the whole lining, but for mine I didn't want to have to re-sew the cuffs. (I know, I'm just lazy!)

Once you figure out how to pull the lining out of the way and have your jacket inside out, you can press your sleeve flat so that you can cut it down to size. Pin where you have marked on your sleeve, and place pins where you want to sew. Also be sure to pin the jacket side as well. In my picture it wasn't pinned so I drew a red line on where you would pin it. (Think: tapering the sleeve so that it matches the pin in the armpit.)

Also, pin on a ribbon that you can use to sew the lining back to the jacket, like how it was originally.

Sew along where you have it pinned. (I cut out the excess fabric first, but I would recommend doing that last, just in case you mess it up!) After it is sewn you can cut out the excess fabric.

Follow this same process for the lining as well, but as you are sewing the armpit, grab the ribbon from the armpit of your outside and include that into your stitch.

{Sewing on the Corset}
First, cut 10 short pieces of ribbon to about an inch and a half. Light a candle, and singe all of the edges.

Also cut two inches off of your black fabric (the same direction they would at the fabric store, you will need the rest for the ruffles)

Decide how long you want you corset section to be. When it is sewn on, you don't want it to go much lower than your waist. Mine was about 8 inches long, and each of my d-rings had about an inch between them.

Cut your black fabric to be the height that you just decided on. Fold in the edges and press them. Pin your ribbons holding the D-rings to the strips of black fabric and when you have them lined up the way you want them, pin them to the jacket. I found the easiest way to pin them to the jacket was to slide the jacket onto my ironing board, so that the lining was underneath the ironing board and out of the way.

When you have everything pinned down, you can take it to the sewing machine, and sew the edges of the black fabric. Sew as close to the edge as you can. You can pin the lining out of the way, or just try to be careful that you don't catch it underneath where you are sewing.

You can string the ribbon in to see how it looks, but I would remove it while you sewed on your ruffles just so that it doesn't get in the way.

{Adding Ruffles}
Put your jacket back on the ironing board. Create a fold going from the inner edge of the corset piece to the bottom of the coat. This is going to be the edge of your ruffles. Press it on both sides so that you have something visual to help you place the ruffles.

Cut the rest of your black fabric in half (You should have something about 8x32 inches by now). One of the pieces can have about 6 inches trimmed off as well, but leave the other one long.

Hem the edges of each piece so that they won't fall apart if you ever go to wash the coat. Using a long, loose stitch, sew the gathering stitch on the top of each piece.

Pull one of the strings on your gathering stitch to create the ruffles. Fold the two outside edges over and pin them to the jacket. Pin the top edge to the jacket as well. The top edge may be messy looking but it will be covered by the next row of ruffles. (The very top one will be under the corset's ribbon and not very noticeable as well)

Sew on both sides and the bottom. (Sorry my picture is after the whole thing was finished because when I was making it I was too excited about finishing to remember to take pictures :)

Next cut your lace, it should be about 32 inches long by 8 inches high, with the scallopped edge at the bottom. Pin the lace in place, so that it covers a few inches of the lower ruffle. Sew the three edges just as before. Follow the same idea for the next black piece and the final lace piece.

{Adding Buttons}
The buttons on the front are purely decorative, and are hand sewn onto the front, over where the existing/useful buttons are.

I hope this gave you some ideas to be able to make a cheap coat seem like your perfect $80+ coat!

For other clothing alteration projects check out these links:
Straps Added to Strapless Dress
Repurposing a Onsie into a Cute Burp Cloth
T-shirt to Un-Tucked Onsie
T-Shirt Embellishment