What do you do when every winter coat you can find for little girls is 100% polyester and the little girl who needs to stay warm is allergic to polyester? We shared the solution we came up with for that same little girl two years ago on this post. Now she is four and her coat is too small. Our solution for that coat was to line the hood with cotton flannel so her face would not be rubbing against the polyester fabric. Usually she was wearing long sleeve clothing and the inside of the coat was not touching her bare skin so she was ok. While searching for a coat this year, all of the warmer winter coats had fake fur (polyester) around the hoods and we knew the previous solution would not work.

So we found a cute light weight jacket (without fur) amongst all the polyester coats and a 100% cotton hoodie to modify into a warm winter coat.

For extra warmth, I hand sewed a layer of cotton quilt batting to the inside body of the pink jacket. I did not add batting to the sleeves or the hood.

Then I removed the zipper from the hoodie, turned the hoodie wrong side out and hand stitched the edges of the hoodie to the inside of the pink jacket. (Notice she now has hidden pockets on the inside of her coat!)  I positioned the sleeves of the hoodie inside of the jacket sleeves and did a small hand sewn tacking stitch through the jacket and hoodie on the underarm seam just above the ribbing of the hoodie. That way the sleeve cuffs are still flexible but stay in position when pulling arms out of the sleeves.

I could have started from scratch and made a coat for her but there wasn’t time. The weather was turning colder and she needed a coat.  Sometimes it is easier to modify what you can find when you can’t find exactly what you need.

Another coat modification I made a couple of years ago was for my pregnant daughter who wanted to stay warm for the last couple months of pregnancy without spending a lot of money on a new maternity coat. See what I did in this post.