Category: Greyhound Coats

This has been a quiet week spent making a batch of greyhound coats. It has been over a year since I made even one coat and while I have a great set of patterns, I do not have written-out instructions. Over the years I’ve perfected some short cuts that made assembling the coats so much easier. I’m going to include a few of those short cuts with pictures so I can capture them for future reference. I’ll file this post with the patterns so I don’t forget!

Here are the four colors of fleece I purchased at Surplus City last week…described in my last post at

https://marykisner.com/finding-fleece-at-surplus-city/

Considering my fabric options, the solid purple went OK with the paisley at the top. Dark navy fleece looked good with the light blue paisley at the bottom. I decided to make 4 coats of each pair of colors…some with the paisley design on the outside and some with the solid color on the outside.

Cutting out the coats

Cutting out the coats is a tedious process and cutting out 8 coats and 8 linings is just about the limit for my hand in one day. Thank goodness my daughter gave me a wonderful pair of scissors for Christmas a few years ago. They are a little larger and very sharp. They cut through the fleece like butter!

After cutting out all the pieces (16 times!) I stacked the pieces for each coat. Here’s a picture of how I lay out the pattern pieces (shown on a different fabric). By folding the fabric selvedges to the center, I can cut out a large and a small coat on each 1 1/2 yard of fabric:

ASSEMBLING THE COATS

(This includes more detailed pictures for my file. Scroll ahead to see the finished coats!)

Making the Straps

I always begin by making the straps. This includes sewing my label and the Velcro hook piece to each strap. These will remind me what color is the outside of a particular coat! The paisley has become the outside of this first coat. (I can’t figure out why the purple fabric photographs as blue sometimes!)

Making the Snood

Working with just the snood pieces, I sew them together at the top, wrong sides together:

Then I turn the snood right side out and sew the bottom edge together. When I trim the seam, I have finally made the commitment to which side is the outside and which is the lining. Trimming the seam is one of my short cuts to make finally assembly much easier.

Making the Body of the Coat

Sewing the body pieces, right sides together and then turning the coat right sides out, the ‘outside’ has not yet been determined. After I sew and trim the neck seam, I have finally committed to which side is the ‘outside.’ Trimming the neck seam is another short cut to make final assembly easier.

Making the Darts

Before I attach the snood to the body of the coat, I need to make the darts that shape the back end of the coat. This is why it matters that I don’t make a mistake and put the darts with the wrong side out!

By the time I sew the snood to the body of the coat, I have stabilized and trimmed both edges and assembling the coat is so much easier.

I will keep a copy of this post handy with the patterns for the coat. You never know when I’ll need to refer to it in the future.

Take a Look at the Final Coats

Here are the coats, stacked and ready to deliver to Nittany Greyhounds!

And finally, I found a model at the kennel to try out a coat!

That’s what I did this week. I hope a few greyhounds are cozy and warm! Enjoy!

As many of you know, I have an ongoing volunteer activity of making fleece coats for re-homed greyhounds. When there are gaps in my writing of a few days, it’s often because I’m busy sewing and I’m really not motivated to try to write a new and exciting post about the process.

For this pose, I’d just like to share how I go about choosing fabrics and how I sew four coats at a time, like an assembly line.

You can read more about my work with the greyhounds over the last two years at the following posts:

https://marykisner.com/greyhounds-in-my-heart/

https://marykisner.com/cozy-coats-for-greyhounds/

https://marykisner.com/ongoing-work-with-greyhound-coats/

https://marykisner.com/time-to-get-back-to-making-greyhound-coats/

First of all, I am making coats for an unknown dog. I make two sizes…large or small. The main difference is the size of the neck area. The dogs arrive at Nittany Greyhounds (https://nittanygreys.org/) in Port Matilda, outside State College. They come from several locations. Some come from one of the few remaining tracks in the USA. Others come from Ireland or Australia. Their challenging travels will be described in another post.

While, in general, the male dogs are “large” and the female dogs are “small”, that’s not always the case so I try to keep my choices of colors neutral. I like using plaids or snowflakes. Any color I choose, I will be making 2 large and 2 small coats. In this latest batch the request was for more small/female coats, so with the bright pink fabric below I cut all four coats the small size.

When I step into JoAnn’s I’m faced with a wide variety of choices:

My most recent trip I ended up with 5 colors, with solid colors for the lining. I agreed to make all the pink ones small since Nittany had a number of females that needed coats. The rest of the colors would make 2 large and 2 small coats by folding the fabric off center to accommodate the wider width of the large coats.

Here were my color choices:

Cutting Out the Coats

I cut four coats of the same color at the same time. After I cut out the linings, I stack the pieces up so I don’t accidently sew a small snood (the neck piece) onto a large coat!

I first sew all the straps, attach my email tag and sew the Velcro (hook) piece to the end.

Then I sew the body of the coat, attach the snood and sew on the strap and Velcro loop piece. I’m always amazed how different colors look in different light! Below is the same coat!

I took this coat out to Nittany Greyhounds to try it on a small dog. Here’s an example of a small male whose owner might prefer the coat NOT be pink! But he served my purpose to show the coat on a dog!

Over the years, I have modified the pattern to accommodate how the greyhounds function in the coats. The coat fits snug around the chest area and running doesn’t seem to dislodge the coat. The snood, the strap and darts at the back end work together to keep the coat straight. Often, in winter, the dogs wear their coats indoors so the coats needed to stretch as they curled up. Originally, I tried using non-stretch sweatshirt fabric and this was the result… looks really uncomfortable.

So, back to stretchy fleece…curling up looks really cozy now!

I realize owners can find interesting coats online that could serve as “costumes” but since there are many cute choices online, I’ll spend my time making functional, warm coats. You won’t see a coat like this from my sewing machine!

Here are two hounds ready to go out for a walk!

Next time you wonder why I haven’t posted for a few days, consider how soon a greyhound will be cozy!

I’ve spent most of the summer with my focus on the garden and a few skin care experiments. In the Spring, when I last thought about making fleece coats for the greyhounds, we had not yet turned on the air conditioners. I got discouraged because working with fleece when it’s hot is not fun. Luckily, the dogs were not facing cold weather so I didn’t feel any pressure to produce. Now that my canning is done and the rest of the garden is just needing maintenance, requests have come in that Nittany Greyhounds needs coats! And now, I’m ready to get back in the groove!

Here’s a picture of a dog in a coat I made a while ago:

First, I had to dig through my fleece to see what colors I wanted to work with next. I ended up with two pieces of fleece, purple and a light-colored plaid. Both can be lined with white fleece.

Next came the challenge of prepping my work space. When I’m not actively sewing, my machine table seems to collect “stuff” like ironing that needed to be done, supplies that didn’t quite make it back into storage, etc. Sort of like having a treadmill handy that you don’t use all the time…pretty soon it’s extra closet space!

Next, I had to make sure it was ready to go, so I found the tools and took it apart to clean out any fuzz I had left behind.

Now to think about what I needed ready to start sewing. I checked that I had new needles, my name labels, Velcro and string tags. I use the tags to indicate a small or large coat. It’s hard to tell which has the large neck unless you compare one with a small. It’s just easier to label the coats.

I set aside the first day of making coats to just get them cut out.

I will make all of the coats the same color at the same time…assembly line. That way I don’t have to change the thread color in the middle of a batch.

And then, one at a time, I’ll make the body of a coat and put it all together.

Today I managed to finish the first coat. Tomorrow I should be able to finish two more. It’s so easy to get distracted with other projects, so I’m glad my canning is out of the way. I just have to keep thinking about keeping my greyhound friends cozy this winter! Enjoy!

If you’d like to know more about how we developed the pattern for the coats, see https://marykisner.com/cozy-coats-for-greyhounds/.

Please comment or email me directly at marykisner@comcast.net.