My daughter was given a maternity pea coat to help keep her and my new grandbaby warm through the rest of the winter. Problem was that it was not very warm and she did not want to spend the several hundred dollars it would cost to buy a really warm maternity coat to wear for a couple more months!

When she came home for Christmas, I determined to send her home with a warmer coat by adding an extra lining. Hanging in my laundry room was an old coat. The quilted lining was still in good shape but the outside of the coat had several tears. I should have gotten rid of the coat a long time ago, but kept it thinking I could use it if I needed to do something outside and did not want to wear my nicer coat. (Now this is why I have a hard time getting rid of things, someday they just might come in handy!)I pulled out the seam ripper and removed the lining from the coat. I also carefully unfastened the hem of the lining in the maternity coat along the bottom and in the sleeves. I turned the maternity coat inside out and cut panels from the old coat lining to fit the front and side sections of the maternity coat and hand stitched them into place along the seams (to keep from adding bulk to the seams of the coat.) It was easiest to pin the lining piece of the old coat in place along the straight edges and then cut to fit the neck and arm and side seam as I pinned. The sleeves of the lining were too wide, so I sewed a narrower underarm seam into the lining and hand stitched the old coat sleeves inside the sleeves of the maternity coat at the shoulders and the bottom of the sleeves. When all of the old coat lining pieces were sewn in place, I sewed the hem of the original maternity coat lining back in place along the bottom of the coat and sleeves.

When it was finished, you could not tell that anything had been done to it, but it was definitely warmer than it was to start with.