Sew Log: Quilted Pekka Jacket (Ready to Sew)
Look no further than my Big Five personality test results (thanks, Truity!) for an explanation of what led me to this quilted jacket project: when it comes to ideas, I am apparently the queen of Grand Plans.
That's why I couldn't stand for just buying a pre-quilted fabric. No, of course not. That would be...cheaper and save me time and also keep things in my kitchen the original color instead of this nice avocado-marigold-madder pink. 
But ain't she puhhh-retty?!
Alright here's what shook down.
Preppppareeee the fabric! I washed, scoured and then cut about 4 yards of cotton muslin into a buncha fat quarters to make it easier to fit things into my not-big dye pot. I mordanted two at a time in an alum bath as I dyed because, again,...I don't have a dye pot that will fit 4 yards of fabric.
Prepppppareee the design! I wanted to go for organic lines without needing all of the pre-cut panels to be precise or identical. I saw this cool technique where you wrap your fabric around a pole or glass and use that to fix the twine/rope pattern tightly. I did that. And then I put it in the mordant bath and it proceeded to shatter the glass everywhere. Oops. So I said eff that and just scrunched em up organically by hand and wrapped up haphazardly with cotton twine I had on hand. I guess I didn't take a pic, but just imagine a bunch of muslin hot dogs hanging out.
Dye baby, dye! This dye bath came from some extra marigold dye that I had from the day before, plus a vat of avocado and some random tosses of dried madder. Look, I'm not very precise. I just salt-bae'd that stuff and hoped for the best. Some of them sat in there overnight. Some of them sat in there for 4 hours. I knew I wanted to make a pieced and quilted jacket with similar colors but also room for variation, so I wasn't trying to be the queen of precision.
Hold breath and pray. The great reveal is both exciting and terrifying. Get ready to hope for the best and expect the worst. Once unraveling my bounty, I did something both obvious-to-me and not-the-right-thing, which was to put it in the sunniest spot in the house aka my cat's bed.
More experienced dyers don't put stuff in direct sunlight as it dries because the sun can fade your gorgeous work. I may be inexperienced, but I am nothing if not curious, so I also set one of the fat quarters up in my bath with no accessible light to see the impact. Honestly, not that different IMO?
"Make" fabric again. Yeah so I cut a bunch of fabric to dye, only to then cut it even more and then piece it all together again. Wheeee!! Are we having fun yet? I cut out all of the fat quarters into 5x5" squares, and then decided to piece them bit by bit (placing the pattern pieces over the connected 5"x5" squares) because I figured it would be easier to quilt smaller bits at a time (and because the regularity of the piecing meant it would be straightforward for me to seam-match if need-be). I'm making the Ready to Sew Pekka Jacket, which obviously was not ready to sew because I had to do all of this work upfront for "fun."
Time to quilt! This is the first time I've quilted something in...decades. I just got some cotton batting, and used some linen I had in my stash, pieced 'em together, and hoped for the best. I didn't do anything fancy...just went for long diagonals through the squares. This was a good choice because then I didn't have to be overly precise...I had already done that in cutting out the squares. Piecing bit-by-bit was a good idea....the larger pieces were much harder for me to quilt and keep the fabric all together and nice and not bunched up. I could have spent more time pinning but like...nah.
Prepare to cut (again). This time, into pattern pieces. This part was the straightforward stuff. Once I got the actual shapes together, the pattern itself came together pretty easily.
I decided to make my jacket fully reversible (instead of lined), because...again, #GrandPlans, so I also bound and flat-felled the seams on the inside. 
Sew it up, baby! The pattern is easy to follow and pretty straightforward. It starts taking shape pretty quickly.
Never get dressed or shower for any pictures. Finish your seams eventually, but write this post instead.
Sit your butt down and hand stitch those final bindings while listening to a podcast and trying to get your cat off your lap. See everything you sort of messed up and remember that you've never done this before and therefore should not expect to be perfect on your first attempt JFC!
I'm going to love wearing her and staying cozy and warm if one day I decide to leave the house. A part of me fantasizes about passing this jacket on to someone I love in the next generation...I guess it's time to be the auntie I wish to see in the world.
Notes to you:
Did you know avocado makes these kind of beautiful pastel pink colors? Keep frozen pits and skins, boil them, and they exude their magic!
At my hourly coaching rate, this jacket would be thousands of dollars. LOL. Think about that next time you buy a hand-crafted piece.
Slow crafting is so rewarding. The thing you're doing now? Do it 3x slower, and actually enjoy the process. Outcomes are just one way to engage with the world.
Notes to self:
Quilting takes a lot of thread. Buy more next time.
You started sewing a year ago, good job on all the progress!
Take your projected time estimates and triple them (at least). I will call this #softwear
WAY TO GO making those sleeves extra long! You have longer arms than the world of patterning thinks you do. Screw them.