Wool Coat #1

I mentioned the other day that I picked up a nice Jones of New York wool coat at the Salvation Army.  And I showed you on Saturday the roving that I picked up at the Black Swamp Spinners Guild sale.  With a bit of thought I've embellished the coat with the roving and have it mostly done.  Hang on...pictures to come.

I really wanted to put something showy on the backside of the coat.  I looked through many of my books but in the end I just created something as I went along.  Kind of dangerous, eh?  Well danger lurked all around me as I began to needle felt the flower pot ~~

I got a little over-zealous and owwww ~~

That's what I get for zipping along and not paying close enough attention.  In the end I created the base of the flower pot from the roving I bought from Zeilinger's last Saturday.

I laid the flower pot on the coat after placing a pin to mark the small of my back.  I knew I didn't want anything on my fanny.  But the pot was way too plain and I needed to come up with something to jazz it up a bit.  I thought about a lattice work pattern but decided I'd save that for the next coat, provided there is a next coat.

I gathered all sorts of beautiful roving and auditioned them carefully for the flowers and leaves.  I have to say I'm pretty darn pleased with the way they turned out.  I even added some beads to a couple of flowers.  Remember all those beads I bought at the bead shop in Chelsea Tanya???  Finally putting a few of them to use.

So tonight I used  seam ripper to open the lining at the bottom of the coat so I could slide the felting foam inside ~~

And then I worked my magic with the six needle and two needle felting tools.  It took about 1 1/2 hours to finish because I kept running back into the living room to watch the Housewives of NYC (shameful, I know). So here's the wool coat, so far ~~

Here are some more shots of the needle felting ~~

And a closer shot of one of the beaded flowers ~~

Now the front is pretty plain still.  I think I'll do the same things on the left side as the right ~~

And I'm thinking about adding some needle felted swirly yarn doo-dads.  That's a technical term.  I swear -- look it up.  Ok, I made it up.  It is April Fool's Day after all.

So now I have to come up with a few more embellishments, sew the lining back together and consider it done.  I'm thinking about making more of these to sell at the art fairs in the fall.  What do you think??