If you are not a football fan you may not be as excited about play off season as we are here in our little neck of the woods.  Our neck is in Colorado so you might make us for Bronco fans but you would be wrong.  Our house is a little satellite territory of Steeler Country.  So, we are facing Kansas City with high hopes this coming Sunday.   As you might guess we have just a little bit of black and gold apparel from jerseys to jackets and hats to gloves.

Among the assortment was the hubbies suede leather Steeler coat.  It was not the most expensive coat ever. Still, it did cost considerably more than a terrible towel and seemed to me to be worth saving.

Problem number one was, the under side of the sleeves were made from yellow suede and the sides of the jacket are black.  After a couple of years of wear, the black rubbed off on the yellow making it look dirty.  Or maybe it was just plain dirty either way the hubby stopped wearing the jacket.

But as fate would have it, winter rolled around again and there was talk of a new Steeler coat.  Well if you know me, you know that, “new” is almost a four letter word, so I was determined to fix the damage one way or another.  I decided I could use fabric paint to cover the yellow and put to rest any further discussions regarding spending hundreds of dollars on a new coat.

Just as my confidence was soaring, (always a good indicator that I should check my swelling ego 🙂 problem number two reared its head.

One of the sleeves had several torn spots from all the embroidery stitching. For a moment my confidence did waiver.  But I had assured the hubby that I could fix his jacket, up to his standards no less.  (As a side note you will not be surprised to learn that his standards are quite a bit higher than mine when it comes to what is and what isn’t usable trash.)

Any how I forged ahead and with some small fabric patches and fabric glue I was able to mostly conceal the rips.

Next I used some black metallic fabric paint (which ended up looking silver) to cover the yellow suede.

Here is a side by side view of the sleeves.

The finished jacket.

And proof that the repair was up to hubbies standards.

OK so that isn’t really much proof but I promise he is wearing the jacket in this picture.  We were fortunate to be able to spend New Years in Pittsburgh and to go to the last game of the regular season.  It was a beautiful day and a fun game to watch.

Happy Upcycling,