Warm Dog Coats

Ski season is almost upon us, and we usually take our dogs along with us so that they aren't home alone all day. It can get a bit nippy in our vehicle and we had been wrapping them in old blankets, which only works well if they are still. Which, of course, they aren't. We'll ski for a few hours, then head back to the vehicle to let the dogs out to play and we grab something hot to drink. This year I thought that I'd make our dogs their own coats using the Green Pepper pattern 553. My local fabric store was having a good sale on fleece, so I bought some soft fleece for the outside of their jackets.

I had some rough unknown wool that I've been saving for a project like this:

I cut out out two pieces of muslin, put a layer of wool batting between each piece, and then machine quilted the layers so that the wool would stay in place and not shift.

Then I cut out the jacket pieces from the fleece, made side pockets with reflective strips sewn on, sewed some Velcro on the neck and chest straps, and they were done! Max's jacket is covered with bees:

The finished jacket looks like this:

Do you notice the enthusiasm? Hmmm, maybe not. The ears rotated backwards show Max's true feelings. Well, he'll be warm, anyway.

Sam's coat is made from camouflage fleece fabric:

Sam's not a ray of sunshine either! He's a very good at moping when he's unhappy about something:

On the up side, they will eventually get used to wearing their new coats and they'll be much warmer this year. For right now though, they are both off sulking with their new coats on.