AD – gifted fabric though no obligation to post

Ah, this has been a hard blog post to write mostly because I just don’t like the thing I made. I have a bad habit of just ignoring/ forgetting/ hiding away makes that don’t go to plan and they often don’t make it to the blog or ‘gram! Buuuuuut I think it’s important to share when things don’t go quite right!

I received a piece of gorgeous pink green metallic jacquard from SelfMade (previously known as Stoff & Stil) as well as some matching ribbing and a pattern for a bomber jacket. My plan was to make a quilted jacket using both sides of the fabric with the pink side on the bodice and the green side on the sleeves. It seemed like a solid idea! I picked up some cheap 4oz wadding here and some lining here to go with it too.

The problem with this make starts and ends with my pattern choice. I used the SelfMade pattern mostly because they offered it. It’s a simple unlined zipped jacket for woven fabrics and a rib neck and hem/ cuff bands. The pattern comes precut on a type of interfacing and only in one size. I picked an M based on the measurements given.

I roughly cut my fabric and wadding to be just larger than each pattern piece and quilted each piece with 5cm diagonal squares. I did it this way as I knew things would likely tighten up/ get squiffy with the quilting process plus it’s much easier to quilt small pieces like this instead of huge swathes of fabric. Once quilted, I cut them to the correct size.

At the last minute, I also chose to add 5cm to the length of the bodice as I wanted it to feel a bit oversized. That poorly thought through change meant the zip I had wouldn’t work! Epic fail on my part. 🤦🏻‍♀️. To correct this, I decided to add a button band and metal snaps to the front as the closure.

At this point, I was losing a bit of heart already but kept pushing through – I’d already spent so much time doing all that quilting and didn’t want it to go to waste!

I finished making it up, adding the ribbing in a bright chartreuse and a pale peach lining and it started to look pretty good! The fabrics really looked lovely together!

That is until I tried it on for real. Don’t get me wrong, it fits ok but it doesn’t have “the look” I was going for! I don’t think I really took into consideration the bulk that the wadding would take up. I should have ordered at least one or two sizes bigger as I think it would’ve looked much better with a looser fit.

So a lot of bad decisions in a short space of time has lead to this mess! I definitely need to learn to take a step back and reassess things if things aren’t going to plan!

The good news, I’ve got about half a metre of fabric left and I’ve a feeling it might be a good choice to try my hand at using fabric for some shoe making! So who knows, I might be able to salvage some rather funky shoes from this!