Do you have an old coat or jacket with a torn lining? In this tutorial, I will show you how you can easily reline your own coat or jacket using the old lining as a pattern.
Relining a coat or a jacket is a great way to give new life to your old outerwear. In will cover fabrics suitable for the project, how to copy your old lining to make a new lining, how to assemble your lining and finally how to sew your new lining to your coat or jacket.
This post contains affiliate links. This simply means that if you make a purchase, I may earn a small commission without any extra charge for you.
Click here to watch the video, or click on the thumbnail above. Or if you prefer you can keep on reading…
Selecting Lining Fabrics
The first step in relining an old coat or jacket is to select your lining fabric. The general rule for lining fabrics is that they are slippery and strong. Some of the most commonly used fabrics for linings are fabrics like polyester, acetate and nylon. Another popular option is Bemberg rayon lining.
If you have a beautiful vintage coat and/or an expensive wool coat I would consider using silk. It lasts longer than many lining fabrics garments are sold with and also has that slippery feel to it. Silk habotai is an excellent fabric option for a lining if you want to use silk.
However, as my husband’s winter coat was from River Island over 10 years ago I didn’t feel it was worth investing more than what the coat did cost new when it came to the lining fabric. For his coat, we picked a black acetate fabric for the bodice, as well as a geometrical printed viscose fabric in black & light grey (see picture below) for the sleeves to replicate the style as much as possible from the original lining (black bodice and pinstripe sleeve fabric).
When I replaced the lining in my leather jacket a couple of years ago I used a print cotton lawn from Liberty and polyester lining fabric in the sleeves. You can use pretty printed fabrics, like cotton lawn, but I highly recommend using a more slippery fabric inside the sleeves if you go for a cotton fabric at the bodice.
You will also need:
- Ruler
- Paper suitable for pattern making
- Pencil or mechanical pen
- Eraser
- Tape (optional)
- Tape measure
- Good quality thread
- Sewing machine-needles
- Fabric scissors & thread snips
- Tailor’s chalk or fabric marker
- Seam ripper
- Iron
- Fray check (optional)
- Pins
How to use the old lining to make a new lining
Start with removing the old lining. Grab your seam ripper and start to seam rip at the neck/centre back. Make sure not to rip the fabric too much as we will use the old lining to create a pattern for the new one.
When unripping take notes and/or photos to document seam allowance, details such as; pleats, pockets, where and how the coat is attached to the lining (e.g. swing tacks, topstitching etc.), hemline fold etc.
Once you have removed your lining from the coat it’s time to separate the pieces so they can lay flat and we can clone them into pattern pieces.
If there are any pleats & darts – cut notches at the edge and mark them, and mark any darts with chalk or fabric marker.
Mark grainline on each piece. Generally, they run parallel to the centre front, centre back and the centre of the sleeve. But double-check your lining fabric to ensure check the grainline required.
Iron your pieces so that they can lay flat. Use the most intact parts of the lining and tape any rips or similar to help the fabric lay flat if needed. Also, I would suggest labelling your pattern pieces to prevent confusion later.
When making your pattern refer to your photos and notes – always follow these instructions if it differs from what I am writing here.
TIP: If you want to make any alternations to the coat it’s the perfect time to do so whilst the lining is removed. Just make sure that any alterations are reflected in the lining as well. I also made sure to remove any dust before attaching the new lining.
Now it’s time to clone your old lining pieces into a new pattern. For this, you can use tracing paper from the local fabric store, or online, craft paper, medical paper, parchment paper or even printing paper taped together if it’s all you have.
If you unlike me do not have a vent or your vent is located at the centre back – which mine is not – you can fold your back piece in half. However, as my vent is located off the centre back I needed to copy the full back piece.
Cut the lining fabric
Smooth and make sure your fabric is laying flat with the selvedges pinned together. This will help the most slippery fabrics, like my acetate fabric, to lay in place. Make sure your pattern pieces are aligned with the grain line.
If your edges on your old lining are relatively neat you do not need to trace the pattern to paper and you can trace straight onto fabric instead.
However, if major areas are missing or are generally vague I would suggest you to trace your pieces onto paper first and recreate what’s missing.
Mark seam allowances, grain lines, notches, folds, pleats and pockets onto your pattern pieces or fabrics. Then cut your pieces and transfer any markings to the lining.
Optional step: Generally as it is a lining you do not need to serge or zig-zag the edges. However, if your fabric frays a lot like my fabric does you might want to consider this or do like me – using Fray Check. Fray check is a seam sealant that prevents the fabric from fraying. When using fray check gently apply it along the edges of the fabric. Let the fabric sit for 5-10 min, then cut off any excess threads.
A little tip I learned recently is to keep a pin inside the bottle of Fraycheck to prevent the tip from drying.
Assemble the new lining
Now it’s time to assemble the new lining! Start by sewing the side seams together. Then attach the shoulder seams. Pin and stitch the sleeves together, then do basting stitches at the sleeve cap which allows for some ease in the sleeves.
Pull thread to gather the sleeve cap before inserting the sleeve into the bodice right sides together.
Pin top of sleeves together with the shoulder seam, pin underarm sleeves into your notches. Pin and sew the sleeves in place, remove basting stitches and then press the lining.
Make sure that the sleeves will be applied correctly. Do check your pattern if needed and mark back and front of the sleeve cap.
At this point in the process, I attached my double welt pocket to the lining. However, any detailing such as pockets and darts ideally should be done before attaching the pattern pieces together. If you want the full tutorial on how to make a double welt pocket click here.
Attach the lining to the coat
Now the lining is complete and ready to be attached to the coat. Pull through the sleeves, wrong sides together. Pin sleeve to hem fold. Then repeat on the other side. I do this to keep the sleeve lining in place whilst attaching the lining to the neck and coat facing.
Then I pull the sleeves out, and with right sides together, I am pinning the lining to neck and coat facing. Sew around to attach.
Unfortunately, it was really bulky around the neck which made it hard to attach the lining nicely. Throughout the process, I realised that when making this coat they must have attached the lining first to the back facing and then it was topstitched through the seam of the back upper collar. I wasn’t prepared to unpick and redo this part so I decide to hand-stitch to even out and strengthen the neck attachment. Before doing so I baste stitched the lining and pressed it in place.
Now it’s time to attach the coat sleeves to the lining. I measured out the hem fold of the sleeve, pined it in place and then pressed the fold.
Then I pined sleeves together making sure that the underarm seams line up to make sure that the sleeves are not getting twisted whilst being sewn together.
The sleeves will not create a funny circle!
Then I stitched coat sleeves together with the lining sleeve.
Now it’s time to attach the lining to the hem. If your coat was open at the bottom you want to make sure that the lining is hemmed and then skip the next following steps.
If your coat is closed at the bottom attach your lining according to the notes you made. My coat had a vent and I made a whole separate video on how to attach a vent to a lining. If this applies to you I would recommend you to check out my tutorial on how I attached to lining to the coat vent.
The next step only applies to all of you who have a closed bottom of your lining.
In one of your sleeves, unpick 20-30 cm, depending on how thick your coat is. Then turn the coat inside out by pulling the sleeve with the hole in.
Next step is also optional but I like to do it to prevent the lining from sliding all over the armholes, and that is to attach the lining to the armhole with either swing tacks or a little piece of fabric like me.
Reach through the hole in the sleeve lining. Grab the underarm seams from both lining and shell. Bring them out through the hole.
Either do swing tacks or attach a ribbon around 3,5 – 4 cm long. Repeat on the other arm.
Now it’s time to close the seam at the sleeve. Pin the two layers together and stitch as close as possible to the edge. You can of course also hand-stitch if you want but I stitched on my machine as you will not see this part, as well as it’s faster.
Then give your coat or jacket, that final press and you are done! ππ»
Check out the other replacing coat lining tutorials:
If you ever found my content helpful and you would love to support my work by buying me a coffee on Ko-fi.com – please feel free to do so! βοΈπ
However, this is just if you want to and if you can afford to do so. If you want to support me there are other ways that you can help out: share my content with people in your life who you think will love it, leave comments both here and on Youtube, as well as giving my videos on Youtube a thumbs up! Any support is highly appreciated! π€ π
Want to save it for later? Pin it!
I really hope my tutorial on how to reline a coat or jacket will inspire you to replace the old worn and torn lining in your own jacket or coat. If you do reline your coat/jacket make sure to do not forget to tag me on Instagram @missmatti as well as using the hashtag #mendwithmatti I would love to see how it turned out!
This design is wicked! You definitely know how to keep a reader amused. Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved to start my own blog (well, almost…HaHa!) Fantastic job. I really enjoyed what you had to say, and more than that, how you presented it. Too cool!
I was just looking for this information for some time. After 6 hours of continuous Googleing, at last I got it in your site. I wonder what’s the lack of Google strategy that do not rank this type of informative web sites in top of the list. Generally the top sites are full of garbage.