Here in Northern MN our winters are pretty chilly and warm winter coats are quite essential! Mara (my oldest) had been given several coats but they started wearing out, One look pretty bad on the outside, another one's zipper only worked some of the time (and was getting a bit small) and another one was really to lightweight for winter wear and also had a non-working zipper. I thought about going out and buying a new coat but then I realized I would have all these non-working coats still on my hands and I didn't want to just throw them away.
So I decided to try to make do and figured out how to use what we have.
I decided to combine these two coats. The one on the left was looking pretty nasty but it was pretty warm and had a good zipper. The coat on the right looked good but was two thin for winter and had the broken zipper.
My methods for combining them were not very professional but it was very quick but it worked. I simply cut (I was going to seam rip but decided it would look all right to cut) the zipper out of the black one. Then I placed the black coat over the blue one and sewed the fronts together all along the zipper (on both sides so the zipper still works). Then I worked a bit to make the bottoms fit together and I sewed it together there as well. That is actually all I have done so far and it is working fine. In the future I might sew the ends of the sleeves together and around the collar area but for now it works.
Sorry the pictures isn't that great but it does look okay and it is super warm! And I am happy to have been able to make the old coats usable again rather than just throw them away.
