DIY Quilted Jacket: Not Your Mama's Quilting!

Hi Darlings and Happy Friday!! 

Today I am so excited to show you my DIY Quilted jacket because this baby was a venture outside of my usual sewing.  When I got my Bernina I knew I wanted to quilt something because that is what you do on a Bernina but I had never quilted anything! and I especially had never pieced together a bunch of squares to create a pattern over a print until it turned into a large piece of fabric for me to cut. I wanted to make something that was NOT what most people think of when you say "quilting" and although time consuming this was relatively easy and I am going to share the steps I took below.

My Quilted Jacket

I knew I wanted to use both the fabrics I had chosen and I knew that I wanted to turn both prints into a pattern and that's how I chose to do the chevron pattern I had seen on the cover of a quilting book some time ago and off to google I went to figure out how the heck to do it. I came across several quilting sites and found that there are a million ways (okay maybe not a million) but a lot of ways create a chevron pattern by piecing but I needed EASY and easy I got from this great tutorial by Bee Square Blog

First I gathered my tools: 2 yards each of the floral print and the polka dot print and a piece of lambskin leather I got at Michael Levin for my sleeves. I also used a quilters ruler and rotary cutter.

I cut the strips of fabric 3" wide x width of fabric from one of the print fabrics and then did the same thing with the other print.

Once I had all my strips cut (I just cut up a bunch and if I ran out I cut more)  I laid one strip of each print right sides together and sewed along one long edge 1/4" seam allowance and I repeated that until I had joined each piece to the other.

This is what the strips looked like when I was done. I had a LOT of these two pieced long strips ;-)

Once I had the stripes done I cut them into 5.5" squares

Following the images on the tutorial I started to piece sections together and sew until I could see the chevron pattern forming.

Continue piecing following the tutorial until you have one large piece of fabric.

Once I had finished piecing it all together and had formed a large piece of fabric I laid out my pattern pieces like I would any other time making sure to align the chevron pattern so the pattern would repeat correctly across the front of the jacket. 

I used Butterick 4926 which is really old and no longer available but it is a really simple shawl pattern that I extended to make my shell.

Once I had all my pattern pieces cut out of the fabric I cut out the batting (which I did not photograph *silly me*) and pressed the batting piece and fabric together to flatten it and quilted the pieces before sewing together the jacket.

I left the back of the jacket in the floral print and added my leather sleeves and lining. This was so much fun to make and I have a whole new appreciation for quilting ;-)

 

xoxo

Mimi g