Upcycling a puffy jacket

I took advantage of the end of the year to look into my wardrobe and remove the clothes I no longer use, I separated them into three categories, to sell, to transform and to use in other projects.

Among the clothes I separated was a puffy jacket, I haven't used for a long time,because it's long and has a hood, two things I don't like, I thought I'd alter it to make it shorter and remove the hood.

I had never done anything like this before but I thought it was worth a try, the worst that could happen was that it wouldn't look good or I wouldn't like the result and in that case I would still not use it but at least it wouldn't take up space in the wardrobe.  

The first step was to remove the zipper so I could put it back on after shortening the jacket. 

It seemed to me that the simplest way to shorten the jacket would be to cut the lining and padding leaving the outer fabric longer so I could fold the end and finish the jacket with that fabric. Another option would have been to cut all three layers to the same measurement and use a strip of the outer fabric to make a bias to finish the bottom.

Having decided on the height of the coat, I put the zipper back on starting from the bottom. I cut off the excess when I was applying the zipper to avoid ending up with a zipper that was too short or too long, so I made sure the size was exactly what I needed.  

Once the zipper was in place, I top stitched it to hold the lining and prevent it from getting caught in the zipper and I finished the bottom part of the jacket.  

I wasn't sure how I wanted the collar so I started by cutting the hood leaving enough fabric to be able to fold it and have a double collar, I put some clips to hold it and tried it to see if I liked the result, I also tried it with the simple collar without fold but I decided on the double collar. 

I cut off the excess fabric and folded and pinned the collar, I tried to stitch the new seam on top of the existing seam that joined the hood to the jacket, it was not perfect but it was ok, and unless someone goes to inspect the stitching up close is not noticeable. 

And that's it, the jacket was ready, I hope to use it more often because now I have no excuse, and it was easier than I initially thought.