Pimp My Coat

A few weeks ago, I bought a green coat from good, old Primark. Now, as you might have noticed, these days I tend to make most of my clothes as I just don't like much on the high street. Plus, I get to faff around and make them fit better and add things in and take things out and generally be bossy with my clothes. Coats, however, are just a little bit out of my league at present. So, buying coats is fine. What's not fine is putting up with something I don't like about a item of clothing just because I bought it from a shop. So, cue Pimp My Coat! Stupidly, I didn't take a proper "Before" picture of this baby and I can't seem to find one online, but what you need to know is that it's dark green, made from a kind of tweedy/waffly-wool-type fabric and came with pocket flaps, plasticy buttons galore and a kind of sash piece on the back.

These are the original buttons:



Which would be quite nice if they were actually made of metal and not of cheap and shoddy plastic. So they were the first to go. I ummed and ahhed about what kind of buttons to replace them with, bearing in mind I didn't have a tonne of money to spend on them and I didn't have 6 matching buttons in my stash (or 6 near enough matching, anyhoo). So, I took a leaf out of Lovely Sam's book and bought some self-cover buttons like these:



A bargain price, I think you'll agree.

What I needed then, natch, was something to cover them with. I went all the way through my fabric stash, but then realised what I really wanted was something inconspicuous, something that wouldn't detract from whatever awesome scarf or brooch I was wearing on top. So, as I HATED the pocket flaps, I took them off with the good, old seam ripper, along with the sash type piece on the back (what is that bit called, btw?) and used part of those pieces to cover my buttons.



Poor sash piece.





But hello new buttons! The covering is uber easy to do. You just take the back piece of the button off, cut a circle of your desired fabric, run a running stitch around the edge, place over the button's face, gather, and then push the back on tight again. Et voila. Lovely buttons of your own design.

All I needed now was an awesome brooch to wear on the lapel. You can't see it, but one lapel is longer than the other, which is a nice design feature, but needs something sparkly or colourful on it. I grabbed a few fabulous buttons from my stash, sewed them together, glued on a pin and there you have it, awesome new brooch:



And here I am wearing the Pimped Coat, although, of course, I never took a "Before" picture and I'm wearing a big, old scarf so you can't even see the blummin' brooch, but I think you get the idea:



A much less fussy version of the original which shouldn't date as quickly. (I hope!)

I got so carried away with my Pimping that I decided to cheer up my old coat by changing the buttons from these:



To these:



See? It's so easy to jazz up or alter clothes that you're not so keen on anymore, or even ones that you've bought and you're not 100% sure about. Give it a go, I says.