Repurposed: From Man's Jacket to Book Bag

My daughter is starting grad school soon and I wanted to do something for her.

I found a man's wool jacket at a thrift store and decided to turn it into a book bag.

It wasn't too difficult, just took a bit of thinking.

First, I measured her laptop to make sure it would fit,
 in case she wanted to carry it in the bag.

I looked over the jacket to decide where would be the best place
to begin cutting and what parts would be good to preserve.

I decided to save the pockets, buttons and lapels.

 I put one pocket on the inside and one on the outside.

The small pocket at the top became a pencil holder on the side of the bag.

I left the buttonholes and overlapped the round edges
 of the lapels to make the strap.

To make sure the bag would be sturdy and structured enough,

 I lined it with felt and used drop cloth between the lining and and the wool.

Finally, I used black seam binding to wrap all the raw edges.

The only difficult part was sewing together all the fabric

because it got pretty thick in some parts.

But in the end, it was worth it.

 It's really cute and she will get a lot of use out of it!