Mrs. Claus Westie Coats

In December, we saw lots of nice Christmas coats and sweaters worn by our Westie and doggie friends on Facebook, so of course Keli and Penny wanted new Christmas coats, too. They haven't had any new Christmas 'clothes' since their Barkettes dresses in 2008! Since they were going visiting with us on Christmas Day, we came up with these Mrs. Claus coats.

We've used this pattern, Butterick 4885, a few times before - remember their Pink Hoodie Slickers and Fance Winter Coats? They hate the hoodies, but still wear the winter coats whenever it gets really cold.

And the first time we used the pattern was for Penny's first fleece coat with furry pink trim. She grew out of that one pretty quickly!

One of the ready-to-wear coats we saw online looked like it was made of red velvet fabric with white fur trim and snowflakes embroidered on the back. But it had sleeves and my Pesties HATE anything with sleeves.

We found red Soft N Comfy fabric at JoAnn Fabrics, which is soft and velvety, just like minkee fabric. For the white trim we found remnants of white Ultra Cuddle fleece at JoAnn's. It resembles short fur, and is soft and warm; AND both knit fabrics are machine wash and dry - easy laundering is a very important feature for our Westie clothes!

Since we've already made all the necessary size alterations to the patterns on the previous versions, cutting out and sewing the coats was pretty easy. We used View D of the pattern because that version of the design already has trim at the tail end of the coat.

I had planned to embroider snowflakes on the back of each coat, but since I didn't actually begin these until the night before Christmas Eve, there wasn't enough time to add that step.

Both girls were sound asleep by the time I was ready to have them try on their coats; they were very cranky when I tried to wake them up to check the size and refused to even sit upright. The velcro on the straps wasn't even sewed on until Christmas Eve morning, when they were more cooperative models.

Keli's coat fits her just right, but I think I would make the white trim section at the tail end a bit shorter, since the proportion seems just a bit off.

Penny's coat fits her nicely, too. Like Keli's, the proportion of the red/white fabrics could be adjusted an inch or two on this one to make it more Claus-like. 

I didn't have time to do the final top-stitching around the edges before Christmas; I may add that later.

And maybe for next Christmas we'll jazz up both coats by adding ribbon trim to the back. Or maybe some 3D snowflakes....

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Wow! Blogger says this is my 300th post! That's a lot of projects blogged over 4-1/2 years!