How Emily quilted her jacket!

 Emily of @emilybruzzini is a frequent tester for our pattern releases, but she's also an incredible quilter with a fantastic sense of colour. 

Emily tested an early version of our Grainger Coat, and jumped right in to improv patchworking the pattern. Emily kindly mapped out the process that she used for her incredible multi-colour coat, and took process photos throughout the making- the results are amazing!

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Emily's Improv Patchwork Coat

Emily improv-pieced the scraps together to make shapes that are big enough for the jacket components before chain piecing scraps together to speed up the process, slowly building up the piece until it is big enough for the pattern piece. She made sure to make everything bigger than it needs to be to account for shrinkage during the quilting process. 

 Making patchwork pieces which are close to the size of the pattern piece (instead of making a large fabric which you then tetris your pattern pieces on to) is a great way to save on time and to help avoid creating new scraps!

Emily does a lot of quilting, so had some excellent advice about constructing the quilt sandwich (top, batting and backing)! She lays out the backing, batting, and top pieces before marking them for quilting.  The top should be the smallest part with the batting being slightly larger and the backing a little larger than that. Emily says it's better to be safe than sorry!

For her coat, Emily marked the quilting lines with a hera marker, using her quilting ruler and the hera marker to make creases to show where to quilt.  On the small pieces like the arms and pockets she marked the triangles completely before quilting (marking lines in both directions).  For the back and front pieces she marked the verticals, pin basted, and then quilted those before marking the other lines to make the triangles. 

After quilting the verticals on the front and back pieces, Emily went back and marked the other diagonals (to form triangles).  To avoid getting tucks and puckers while she was quilting, she quilted in sets of parallel lines and made sure to keep an eye on any pooling of fabric that could happen if the pin basting wasn't quite right.

Once the quilting is completed, you can check your quilted pattern pieces against your pattern and trim down as needed. You can see above that Emily overlocked/serged the edge of her pattern pieces together before using wonder clips to clip together. Trying to clip together bulky things like this can lead to bent pins, so sewing clips are a great choice.

After sewing together the pieces, the inside seams can be bound with a special flat binding finish because the finished seams sit flat, your coat can be reversible (though only 1 side will have pockets)!

The Details:

• Emily tested an earlier version of the pattern that had a different neckline and shape around the hem.
• Emily used store bought bias for the binding on the inside of the coat and made her own spotted binding for the outer edges and pockets.
• The batting used is a low loft cotton batting called Warm and White
• Polyester Gutterman all-purpose thread was used for piecing, quilting, and assembly.
• Emily hand-stitched the binding to the inside of the coat before top-stitching it
• She also hand-stitched down the outer edges of the pockets after machine stitching them down on the inner part of the binding.

Get 15% off any pattern when you become a Muna and Broad Maker or Insider on Patreon.