My entry for this week is: Upcycled Shards of Light. I have wondered for a while what it would be like to have a winter coat made out of a quilt. With this week's challenge - I decided this was the time to be brave and cut into a perfectly good quilt.
I selected my quilt Shards of Light which I made in 2015. It has hand dyed fabric that I dyed and a mottled grey background. First I washed it on hot - then I dried it on high heat so that I knew all the shrinking was done and it could be laundered after wearing. This was its own challenge as I don't usually wash quilts like this.
Then I set to work drafting a pattern. In college I had a vintage wool coat that was raglan sleeved with the wide round cape collar and I thought it would be nice to have one again, so I drafted a pattern with two part sleeves to form the nice shoulder cap as the quilted fabric wasn't going to have much give or play - even on the bias. I went with a single piece front with darts from the top down to not disturb the quilt pattern. Then I cut these pieces out of an old sheet - to simulate the quilt and did a "muslin" test run. By this time, the quilt was dry and ready to go.
I had to psych myself up a couple of times to cut into the quilt. The back,being the biggest, was the first piece I cut and that was on a fold and hoo boy - that was thick! I laid the pattern pieces so that the bright colors were running vertically on the coat. Once I got the first piece cut and convinced myself I wasn't totally crazy, I just kept cutting and got the major pieces done. Sunday night I had the coat assembled - short of pockets, proper hems, closures and stray thread trimming. It was an adrenaline rush!
I was happily surprised to find some binding from the original quilt still on a paper towel roll in my stash.... this was exceptional because it was actually cut on the bias as it was from a hexagonal quilt I did just before this one. So binding the cape collar and pocket openings were that much easier and match perfectly. I used as much of the binding from the original quilt as I could retain when cutting the pieces.
I have a belt closure as well as a cloak clasp at the top and am happy to report that it is cozy warm and DONE!! Thank you for reading - and if you are sew inclined, I recommend making yourself one too!
--Jen Mulder - I create in Madison, WI USA
That is really cool and especially how you are showing it. Project Runway?
ReplyDeleteSuper cool. So brave to cut into a quilt and make something else out of it! Well done.
ReplyDeleteFabulous! You are a brave woman to cut into a quilt like that but the results is really fantastic!
ReplyDelete