Sewing Machines and Sew Forth: Another Tamarack Jacket

Tamarack Jacket

I'm fairly certain this gray and black geometric pattern fabric came from Ginny's Fine Fabrics a few years ago. Since then though, I lost my online fabric stash record so I can't check the details. The other possibility is that it came from Treadle Yard Goods. Either way, I had about 3 1/2 yards and that was enough to try making a longer version of the Tamarack Jacket from Grainline Studio. For the lining, I used a paisley that came from Joann sale rack. It was one of the few slippery fabrics I had enough of to use for a lining.

Cutting out the gray fabric was easy, but the paisley took quite a bit of time. It was so very slippery and it frayed as soon as it was cut.

You can see the 3 inches I added to the length of the coat

Once the jacket and the lining pieces were cut, I sandwiched cotton batting in between the layers. All the layers were hand-basted together to minimize slippage during quilting.

Basting jacket back to the batting

Trimming around basted layers

Next, the back, front sides, and sleeves all got quilted. The pattern was drawn on with a chalk pencil and the Bernina 1230 with its walking foot did all the stitching.

Top half of coat front has vertical lines, the rest has diagonal lines

Quilting on back

Tops of sleeves also have vertical lines

Lining crinkles noticeable with quilting

After quilting, the front and back were sewn together, sides seams were finished, and sleeves were inserted. Most seams were finished with the serger in the hopes of forcing the fraying lining into submission. Serging helped, but there were parts where the lining had slipped so much during quilting that it no longer fit into the seam allowance. There are a couple places that didn't get caught by the serger and I went back and tacked the lining in those areas down by hand. Once it was sewn together, the jacket hung on the dress form for a few days while I considered binding options. I wanted solid black and was planning to drive out to the quilt store in Arlington Hts for some black Kona cotton, but then remembered that I had some leftover cotton twill that I had been using for trouser muslins this summer. I cut that into 2" strips and used that for binding.

Making binding on the Bernina 1230

The binding goes all the way around the front opening, neckline, hem, and sleeve openings of the coat.

Basting still holds layers together until binding is done

Mitered corners for the binding

Binding finished by hand even around tricky curves

The front welt pockets were intentionally left out. Since I intend to wear this jacket with jeans or dress pants I will already have access to pockets.

Awaiting sleeve binding

The jacket pattern does not include a front closure and I debated whether I wanted to add one. Looking through my stash, I stumbled upon a frog closure. I don't know how or when this joined my stash, but it was a perfect fit for this project.

Single frog closure

After settling on placement, I attached the frog closure by hand.

Frog closure

Before wearing and photographing the finished jacket, it was machine washed in cold water to erase the chalk quilting lines.

The following pictures, and the first one in this post, were all taken by my sister-in-law, Victoria. She graciously agreed to photograph a couple of my finished projects recently and she has single-handedly upgraded the photo quality on this blog. Heretofore I was taking selfies or mis-managing the timer and settling for some crazy shots. It was a relief this time to not have to worry about accidentally cutting parts of me out of the shot, wardrobe malfunctions, photo-bombers, or blurry pics. Victoria also edited her photos to showcase the details of the finished coat. This will encourage me to up my sewing/finishing skills so future finished projects are indeed camera worthy. Thank you, Victoria.