Crack Coats- Phase 2: Children of the Corn

There's really no reason for the Children of the Corn reference except for the fact the next 3 coats I made were all for kids and I wanted to make the kids sound crazy instead of myself for a change. Did it work? Do you have a vision of nutso kids in your head and not a nutso chick with a sewing machine? Good, let's move on.


After making baby Mary's coat, I decided to make a coat for my best friend's daughter, Julia. She was 18 months at the time and Colleen, my BFF (yo Rough!), had sent me this really cool cotton fabric from Etsy just so that I could experiment with it. So tempted to make an experiment joke right now but will show self-restraint....Anyway, I just loved this fabric and didn't want to wait until the spring to make another little dress, so I thought, why not make a coat out of it? Alright, alright, I didn't come up with this on my own. When I need inspiration, I browse Etsy. On there I saw some really cute coats in bright cotton prints so that's what led me to try this out.


Like baby Mary's coat, this pattern was very simple as well. It was actually from a layette pattern that I already had but it didn't matter, I just needed the shell. Unfortunately I can't find the pattern to share but it was a retro pattern from the 1950's. For the lining, I used a North Face fleece that was too tight for me and just for a little extra warmth, I sandwiched in another layer of fleece in the body part only. I wanted her to be able to bend her little arms so I didn't do a double lining in the arms. 

Once I was finished, I found some fabric left over from baby Mary's nursery set from Satan and made a few ruffles for the bottom of the coat and for a cute little butt ruffle. I alternated fabrics for the ruffles on the butt and they looked so dang cute I could have crapped my pants. You may want to pre-crap your pants before you look at the pics, because for this coat, I made the MATCHING HAT! Go ahead, crap away. 

In the midst of all this girly stuff I was sewing, my little nephew Jett was asking me when Aunt Anna was going to make something for him. Now, this kid is so cute that everybody wants to steal him. So how could I not make something for him? I found this Spiderman fabric at JoAnn's, bought some really soft dark blue flannel for the lining, and used this pattern:

I know, I know, it's a girl's pattern. But there are very few patterns for boys that don't involve super  dorky matching father-son rope ties. Jett was almost 4 at the time so size-wise, this pattern worked perfectly for him. This is probably one of the few things that I have ever made start to finish in a day. I love using zippers. They are so much easier than buttons. The only thing I would have added to this coat is a little tab at the top of the neck to secure the zipper closed. It just looked like it should have closed a little more to keep the wind out. 

The last coat I'm going to show you is the most elaborate of this post: The Echo. Echo's coat had to be like her personality; totally unique and super colorful. I found these 2 fabrics at Ikea of all places. I liked the heavy weight cotton for warmth but it ended up being hard to handle at some times as well. I chose a pattern from Daisy Kingdom but obviously did not use fake fur, like the cover picture:

I don't like these patterns. I had already bought another one for another coat so I was stuck with it, but I wouldn't use it again. And it's all because of the rascally neckline! I just wanted to use that word. In reality, that neckline made me it's bitch. So much that I made the coat all the way up to the collar then put it away until I could do some research. I found no help in the end, so I just kept sewing and hoped for the best. The change I made to this pattern was that the back was open, kind of like a pair of curtains swagged to the sides. I edged the coat with the contrasting fabric, although it was too thick to ruffle in the normal way so I ended up hand pinning all the ruffles in place with about a billion pins. Where it opened up in the back, I sewed on alternating fabric ruffles right onto the liner. It came out cute, but for some reason it was not exactly what I had in mind. And of course, I made the matching hat. Hats are really easy, by the way. And if you have a problem with the neckline, send me a message and I'll try to help out by providing all the cuss words I used while working it out myself.

I had thought this coat would be huge on Echo but as it turns out, the sleeves were almost too short. The red ruffle you see on the cuffs was sewn on later to extend the length an inch.

For this coat, I used regular metal snaps attached to the lining of the coat. The entire coat was lined with this red fabric that was really soft but still kind of slippery. Abby had told me that the only problem with baby Mary's coat being lined with flannel was that it didn't slide against other fabrics so getting baby arms into the coat was like threading wet noodles into a straw. So if nothing else, line at least the arms with something silky.

Tune in soon for Crack Coats- Phase 3 and see my mom's beautiful coat and my niece Gaby's coat that was so rocking, you will be sewing up your own leg warmers before you know what hit you.