I bought this coat at the op shop a few weeks ago and knew that it would need a bit of work to make it really wearable.

Both the main fabric and the lining were very creased and looked as though it had spent some time crammed into a bag of donations. Anyway, I managed to improve that by ironing it inside and out with lots of steam. The other problem was that the lining of the sleeves was too long and hanging below the finished edge.

I unpicked the bottom edge of the lining from the main sleeve and corrected the length as well as making a slight adjustment to the overall sleeve length. Then it was a relatively simple matter of slipstitching the lower edge of the lining to the sleeve.

I am really happy with how it looks now and am confident that I will have plenty of opportunities to wear it in a variety of ways with both dresses as well as jeans and shirts or jumpers.

Meanwhile, I seem to have established a small enterprise for my spare time in doing alterations for other people. The majority seem to be taking up jeans and trousers – there must be a lot of vertically challenged people in the town where I live. Other jobs have included lengthening sleeves, putting side splits in the side of tops, removing sleeves, making tshirts smaller, taking in the waistband of jeans and even shortening the straps on reusable shopping bags. I charge less than commercial rates as this is not much more than a hobby for me and the bonus is knowing that in many instances the clothes in question would have simply been discarded.

Anyway, I am heading out to dinner tonight for a family birthday celebration and will be wearing my newly-altered coat over my dress.