My I-Love-Work Sweater Coat

I am well aware that my kind of sewing is 'MY KIND" of sewing...Really -- nobody loves Frankensewing as much as I do. To be honest, it has become kind of an obsession....

When we found this brand new coat at Bargain Bonanza, on SALE FOR ONLY $5...I wanted to buy it for Lilly.  But she told me it was way more MY taste than hers...

Last week, I blogged about buying this coat...

The first step is to lay it on top of a garment that I know ALREADY FITS ME...This is the most fool proof way I know to figure out how much fabric I need to add.

Then, I cut the sides open.

I decided to cut up an old pair of black knit pants for the sides...but the sweater knit wanted to stretch out of shape, so I cut a 2" strip of leopard print knit, folded it in half, and inserted it IN THE SEAM.   

The new side inserts were easy -- cuz I used the existing pant hem...And the piece of leopard knit did a nice job stabilizing the seams.

I also cut out the sleeves....and, of course,  the problem is that the shoulder seam is WAY too narrow...

Again, the black sweatering wants to STRETCH...so I decided to add a piece of zebra corduroy.

THEN -- the final step will be to make the sleeves TWICE their original size...then sew them BACK onto my now-fabulous-sweater-coat.

To make the sleeve TWICE AS BIG as it originally was -- I cut the sleeves off a black pullover (from my stash)...and I even managed to save the cool thumb hole!!

You can see...I'm cooking right along on this project...and then this happened....

My basement is such a mess -- I COULD NOT FIND THE LEFT SLEEVE...!!

Ugh. I looked and looked...and looked...

OMG.  I searched for over an hour Saturday night...

Then, I got up Sunday morning and went down with complete optimism...

And looked on and off all day.   I gave up and went to the pool.

My only hope is NEW EYES...Carrie comes on Monday