An Upcycle 30 Years in the Making

College is a great time for trying on personas. Even if you’re like me, and you went to college to study and to get a good job, you also spend time trying to “find yourself.” I went to Boston University freshman year with “outdoorsy” affectations. I needed just the right look. The summer before school started, on a trip to Quebec I bought this:

It’s an iconic Hudson’s Bay blanket, 100% wool, keeping Canadians warm for centuries, in a style little changed over the years. This was a twin-size or “four-point” blanket, marked with four blue lines along the side. Growing up, I had understood that the points dictated how many pelts a trapper had to trade for the blanket, but the Hudson’s Bay Company says this story is apocryphal. Boo.

It goes with nothing in my home now and has been toted around for decades. (When I set the blanket out on the bed to photograph it, my husband said, “Where did that old blanket come from?”) I’d long thought of refashioning it into a iconic coat of my northern heritage, so the combination of the PatternReview.com Refashion Contest and the Bargainista Fashionista contest left me with no excuses!

As long as there have been Hudson’s Bay blankets, people have been making them into coats, it seems. I’d see them around once in a while, growing up in the 70s in New Hampshire, and I just love these vintage ads:

1950s coat on eBay

Tres chic in your blanket coat!

Pretend you’re a Revolutionary War solider!

While these looks are classic, I wanted something a little more modern. I almost keeled over when I saw this coat, from the designer Monse.  Cost: 1,990!

I figured I could make something similar for the grand out-of-pocket cost of NOTHING!

I’ve had Butterick 6244 in stash since it won a “PR favorite” award in 2016. The coat is semi-fitted and unlined, with the front extending into a draped collar. Seems like a good match, right?

The pattern calls for wool double-cloth or coating. The blanket was a bit heavier, so I had to adapt a bit. I added 1 cm to the side and center-back seam allowances to give me plenty of real estate for the turn of cloth into flat-felled seams. I hemmed the bottom and sleeves by hand to reduce bulk.

Instead of doing a bulky narrow hem on the front, I cut off the 5/8-inch seam allowance and finished the raw edges with a machine triple blanket stitch in navy upholstery thread. The stitch is a bit uneven, as the wool was heavy and was hard to feed through the machine. I have decided to pretend this was intentional, to give the coat a “rustic” look. Also, because the blanket’s right side was a bit pilled up and had a couple of small stains, I used the wrong side out.

I skipped the Monse coat’s buckled sleeve cinchers and the weird chest harness, in part because I didn’t want to buy buckles and grommets and in part because I just don’t like them. I sewed the original Hudson’s Bay label into the coat, to match the Monse coat.

Upcycle knock-off of a $2,000 Monse coat

It’s too hot (FINALLY) to wear it this year, but it will be perfect for next winter!

Author: shoes15

I live in Connecticut, USA with my husband and my dog, in an old house outfitted with a sewing room, a garden, an orchard, and a big liquor cabinet. View all posts by shoes15