A Day of Stitching

Now that I am officially done with my quilt, the next big project to tackle is the quilted jacket I started a few months ago.

Yeah this one, that i look really grouchy in.

Today I pulled out the fabrics and pattern and tried to figure out next steps.  The complicating factor is that I am using the triangle design from one jacket pattern on the form of a different jacket pattern.  Figuring out how to properly sew on the triangles to a non-square shape was something I puzzled over for a few hours.

First I spent a long while trying to tailor the muslin foundation to just the right shape.  If you look at that top photo, you'll note the sleeves are too long and the body too short.  And I think I flared it at the hips just a bit too much.  Tailoring this jacket was definitely complicated by the fact that I've never made a garment before and have no idea what I am doing.  I finally got to a point where I decided it was "good enough" and moved on to figuring out how to sew on my design.

The first step was cutting all of these lovely equilateral triangles.  I finally figured out how to use the 60˚ line on my cutting mat!  Now the pattern calls for sewing them all into a strip and then attaching that to the foundation, but I knew if I went that route I wouldn't have any nice triangle points, so I manually sewed them all on in a row.  Basically I would sew one triangel onto the foundation, then mark where the point would be in the final seam, and stitch on the next triangle to meet that point properly.

For this project water soluble pens have become my best friend.  I've been using them to write all over the muslin, marking the final stitching lines, writing things like "outside" and "inside" and "left front."  Today I sewed the triangles on the two front panels, and after I finished one I was able to trace the stitching lines directly onto the second piece so that they would be symmetrical.

Sorry I didn't take more process photos today.  When I was done with the front two panels I basted them back onto the foundation to see how it looked.

I'm pretty happy with the current progress! (Also there are sleeves, I just took them off when I was disassembling the muslin.)

In other news, the books I ordered at Martingale's $6 sale arrived today.

I am very excited to try some of these projects!