Quilted Jacket and General Updates

Animal alphabet quilt: Top is *almost* done!  I am hoping to finish all of the applique today if I push it.  Once I do I'll post another 26 shots of all the finished critters. Joann's is having a massive sale right now so today I bought some gorgeous border fabric and really cute flannel backing fabric for the baby quilt.  I should get it ready for quilting this week.

FMQ Challenge:  I just discovered a bunch of free motion lessons online at The Quilt Show!  I just subscribed to this website last week and I'm already overwhelmed by the wealth of information available on it.  I think my (unrealistic) goal will be to practice some form of free motion stitching once a week.  I still want to work more on February's feathers before I move on to March (or catch up on January!)

Now, onto to main topic of this post: a quilted jacket!  While at the Pacific International Quilt Festival in October I bought this pattern for a quilted jacket, intending to make it for my mom.

Find a ton of neat jacket designs at http://www.lorrainetorrence.com/

Well she was concerned that it would look too old for her, and sure enough when I made the muslin foundation it came out like this:

It looks like a lab coat!  Very baggy and very long.  I tried to tailor it myself but since I've never made clothing before I had no idea what I was doing.  After some thought I decided to find a new, more youthful pattern for a jacket, then use the quilting design from the Lorraine Torrence pattern on the other jacket foundation.

I ended up with this pattern:

It's great because it comes in petite, and because simplicity patterns are made for people who don't know what they're doing.

So here's the new foundation:

Yes, I look like a grouch, but isn't the jacket cute?

Apparently in my zeal to make it petite I actually shortened it too much, so I'll have to sew on some extra fabric to the bottom or something.  The trick now will be to adapt the triangle design from the original pattern properly over to this one.

When I was visiting AK I bought all of the fabrics for this jacket, with input from my mom.  I bought enough fabric that I can probably make two matching jackets!  Here is a shot of the color scheme:

This photo does not do these amazing colors justice!

Anyways, this project is going to be set aside for a quite some time, because I really want to finish the two quilts that I am currently in the middle of so that my stack of projects in progress is not so large.  I *really* don't want to get in the habit of having a lot of unfinished projects lying around!