Key themes for me in 2022 have been using up scraps and completing unfinished objects. I've really powered through quite a few quilts and smaller projects already this year, but there was one quilt that just wasn't making me feel excited to dive in and get it done.
It's this one.
I call it Zen Presbyterian.
I used a layer cake of Shibori II by Debbie Maddy for Moda together with a few pieces from her Machi collection, some similar fabrics from my stash and the "fish eye" grey fabric which was a super buy at a store-going-out-of-business sale. I remember the sales lady commented that nobody ever wanted to buy those "fish eyes" since they made your eyes go squirrely -- not great sales technique I thought at the time, as I bought the remainder of the bolt.
My original idea was that I would make a queen sized quilt to be used in my AirBnB rental. I used a very simple pattern, with the intent of practicing free motion ruler quilting skills.
Even though it's a super simple design, I still messed it up, which you can see if you look closely at the gray stripe and triangles. I was having a hard time with details at the time-- it was very shortly after Daniel's death that I pieced this top, so 2017 or maybe early 2018. I was trying hard to get back to quilting, but it just felt like a chore, and I made lots of mistakes and had a hard time with sticking to anything. (Normal for a brain in grieving and loss mode.)
Ironically, after a day of frustration sewing, ripping out seams and getting very aggravated when things that used to be easy for me were just incredibly confusing, a friend from my yoga class commented that I was such a "zen" person, so calm and even-keeled. I had to laugh, because her perception was so at odds with my internal reality, and I told her that if I was zen, I was a zen Presbyterian. Yeah. That makes no sense, but that's what I said. I then told her about the very simple quilt I was struggling with, and how frustrated I had been just hours before class. She commented that she just had to see my Zen Presbyterian quilt-- so that's how it got named.
So trying to be as zen as I apparently appeared, I accepted the layout error as a design feature, and I got the completed top layered and basted. It then sat languishing for a few years. The cats liked burrowing into it. I moved it from closet to closet. It showed up on to-do lists for several years. And I kept feeling bad about not finishing it.
This year as I sorted and purged my quilting room, I realized that my failure to finish this particular quilt was due to several things.
1. I wasn't as zen about the mistakes in layout as I liked to think I was. I knew it was going to bug me every time I looked at this quilt. The more simple a design is, the more the mistakes show up.
2 .With more experience as an AirBnB host I realized a handcrafted quilt wasn't my best option (my guests value freshly laundered bedding more than unique quilts, and washing any quilt multiple times a week is excessive.)
3. After a little experience with ruler quilting, I knew I wasn't going to enjoy manipulating such a big and heavy quilt on my domestic machine while using rulers.
4. I've quilted two large quilts in the last two months, and the arthritis in my hands is annoying enough to make a third big quilt project unappealing.
I've seen the quilted jackets (and other garments) popping up on social media and I'm apparently subject to peer pressure just as much as the next person, so it occurred to me that a quilted jacket was a good way to re-purpose Zen Presbyterian (ZP). When I saw the Ruby Pea Coat by 5 out of 4 Patterns, I knew it would be a good choice. Pockets! Hood! Relaxed fit but not shapeless! And I know from experience that 5 out of 4 Patterns are always well drafted and have good instructions, even for people like me who are not primarily garment stitchers.
Because my fabrics were not pre-washed and I know that my free motion quilting creates quite a bit of shrinkage, I sized up. I measured an XL, but I cut 3X. Originally I planned to follow the lined jacket directions, and I separated the quilt, tearing out the small amount of quilting I had already done and setting the lining to one side, keeping the pieced top pinned to the batting. I cut out the major pieces using my projector, but also made a paper pattern (projected onto paper and traced that) because I was having a hard time figuring out a layout that would economize but also result in good pattern matching of the gray stripe feature. I also tried to avoid quilt piecing seams along the edge of the coat pattern pieces because that would result in very bulky seams in the finished garment. I also eliminated the back seam and cut the jacket back as one piece to eliminate another seam.
After I cut out the coat, I cut the quilt backing as the lining. At that point I realized that I preferred not to follow the pattern's instruction for the coat lining, and I cut the lining more as "side 2", just replicating the main coat pattern pieces. From there I assembled the coat fronts and backs for both side one and side 2, and then stitched them together right sides facing, leaving the arm holes open and only using a long basting stitch along the neckline. Because my jacket's side 2 alleviated the need for a hem, I cut off the hem allowance and skipped making the facing called for in the pattern.
After trimming all the batting in the seam allowance right to the stitching line and grading the seams, I turned the garment right sides out, pressed, added pockets to side 1, and then did the free motion quilting through all 3 layers, leaving a margin of a couple of inches around the neckline unquilted because I knew the hood was going to need to go there..
I assembled the sleeves, side 1 and side 2 with batting in between and free motion quilted them while they were flat. Strips of flying geese blocks which were originally part of the quilt back were part of the sleeve cuff on side 2. When I assembled the sleeves I used inserted biding strips as suggested in the pattern to create a finished sleeve on side 2. As a quilter I'm used to hand stitching binding, so my binding strips are finished with an invisible slip stich by hand.
More of the flying geese blocks made it into the hood on side 1. The hood was easy to assemble, and I pretty much followed the directions in the pattern. I free motion quilted the hood when it was assembled, after the top stitching step (3-D free motion quilting--yeehaw!). Attaching the hood to the jacket was easy -- I removed my basting stitches at the neck of the jacket, and stitched right sides together of side 1 jacket and side 1 hood. Then I slip stitched by hand to attach side 2 hood and side 2 jacket.
Attaching the arms to the jacket was standard, except I used binding strips to cover the seams and create a finished sleeve on side 2. Because the fabric is pretty distracting (thank you fish eye fabric), I find the join is not visible at all.
I wanted both sides of my jacket to be equally functional, so I added pockets to side 2 using scraps and hand stitching the pockets. If I really thought about it in advance, I probably could have figured out how to machine stitch both layers of pockets at the same time. Or maybe not. Hand stitching wasn't so bad.
For a fastening, the best option I could come up with that was truly reversible was snaps. After trying on the jacket and thinking about how I will wear it, I opted to put the snaps lower than the pattern calls for.
Luckily for me, a friend let me use her Kaz snap setter so I was able to add my snaps easily and with none of the drama I've experienced in the past using the old spool and hammer setting methods. (Thanks again, Cathy!) After playing with her cool Kaz, I started to think I may need my own snap setter. I think snaps would start appearing many places around my house. So much cleaner as a finish than velcro, and so much faster than buttons and button holes, or even zippers.
Things I would do differently next time:
- I would cut the quilt top into manageable chunks and then layer the top, batting and backing and free motion quilt the pieces before cutting out the coat pieces. I would then follow the directions for an unlayered jacket and would use binding (maybe matched bias binding) to cover my seams and serve as a hem. That would have been an easier and more logical approach.
- I would make pockets without batting between the pieced surface and the lining. If I wanted a little more body, I would put a layer of flannel in there in place of batting so that the quilting would have some texture but not so much bulk. As it is, with two layers of pockets in addition to the jacket itself, there's a lot of bulk. I could use the pocket area of this jacket as oven mitts.
- I would make the arms longer. I did add 1" to the pattern length to make up for shrinkage from quilting, but that wasn't enough, so my sleeves are more like 3/4 sleeves on my ZP coat. I'm fine with that, as it works in our PNW climate and my casual wardrobe.
As many online commenters from the 5 out of 4 FB page pointed out, I could add cuffs or bands to lengthen the arms. If I find that I don't enjoy the jacket because the arms are too short, I will in fact add quilted fabric bands. It wouldn't be all that hard, and I definitely have enough scraps left over. We'll see.
Anyhow, there it is, at exhaustive length. How Zen Presbyterian became a Ruby Pea coat. If you take away nothing else, read this as a history of figuring it out as you go along. If I knew exactly what I was doing from the first step, it would have been a faster project and the construction more straightforward. But I actually enjoyed taking each step as it came and then working through how best to apply the process to the particular materials I was working with. That's probably not exactly zen, but it's close enough for me.
