Re-use and Repair!

I know, I know, I haven't updated this blog in quite some time. I have no excuse. I have been lazy, however, I plan to change that. I have several projects planned but fist of all, let me start with my most recent completion. My friend recently came to me with a damaged coat that he offered up as spare fabric. Now this was, of course, a very nice gesture on his part, but it left me with somewhat of a dilemma. You see my plan is, and always has been, to make junk useable again, and I simply could not think of a use for this coat. Here is the coat in question:

Now, at first glance it may appear that this is a perfectly good coat, however, first glances can be misleading, as this next picture shows:

Underneath the right arm was this particularly nasty dog bite. Now don't be alarmed, my friend wasn't wearing the coat at the time that the dog decided to turn it into a chew toy. No damage occured to human flesh! The same cannot be said about the fabric!

Anyways, to cut a long story short, my friend and I put our heads together to try to solve this mess. It was immediately apparent that simply stitching the hole shut wouldn't do any good, and the placement was far too awkward to put a patch over it. So, the decisison was this; COMPLETE MAKEOVER!
Using an old pair of unused jeans I got to work restyling the jacket. Firstly, the jeans were cut into strips, and then sewn onto the coat in a pseudo-union jack pattern:

Several hours of pinning, and the odd tea-break or two:

And eventually, I come up with a finished product that I'm happy with:

Ta-Daa!
This project was truely a test of my minimal skill! Some of the strips were sewn on using a borrowed sewing maching (Thanks Mum!) and some were sewn on by hand to preserve the pockets. All-in-all, I think this is time well spent. My friend was happy with the finished result and has promised to model it for me sometime so that I can get some decent photos, and he has been spared the cost of a new coat. Top that off with the fact that we saved both a coat and a pair of jeans from adding to landfill and I think I'm happy to call this a job well done!

Total time spent: Around 10 hours (mostly due to my low skill levels)
Total cost: £0.00! Can't get better than that!