It’s FINISHED!

I hinted at this on Instagram, and it’s finally done

The beachcomber jacket!

Early in January I got the catalog from Connecting threads

and there was a picture of Edyta Sitar’s Beachcomber jacket in it and I’ve seen her on Youtube and thought the idea of cutting up a sweatshirt was fascinating but I never tried it, on CTs website they were sold old so I ended up getting it straight from Laundry Basket Quilts and  got the PDF, then printed it and ordered a sweatshirt on Amazon!

The directions said to order a sweatshirt one size bigger than you normally wear, I’m between a small and medium so I ordered a Hanes Medium

Since I’m a pattern writer, I rarely order patterns anymore, maybe a book, but that’s rare too, so when I ordered this pattern, I thought there would be some interesting tips for making this, of course there was directions on how to make the star blocks and I make as many as the pattern called for.

But otherwise the pattern was very vague in my opinion, even with cutting apart the sweatshirt.

I got the idea of using swedish tracing paper and I traced all the sweater parts at this point, just in case I wanted to duplicate the pattern and use batting!

Plus I realized at this point that I had made way too many star blocks, I have 9 small and 1 big star leftover and the pattern mentions adding other stripes and blocks, I didn’t have room for much at all, I did a bit on the sleeves but really not much.

I hadn’t planned on using lining but when it got to the quilting part, I didn’t want to use my small machine so I put it on the long arm and I had a nice yellow bee print leftover and has just enough- though it was odd too to figure out placement etc, I should have planned on the floor before, I could have saved some fabric, oh well.

I basted down the sweater parts first as much as possible

Then laid the pieces on top for each section and quilted them, this time I did custom things in each star block, a feature I rarely use, so that was kinda fun I guess, it’s just tedious.

And I finished the pieces in an afternoon!

Then came to cutting out the parts, how do I do that? because I used a big piece for the backing and the front parts were overlapping the edges of the sweater pieces, I had to REALLY look and see where the sweater parts were in the quilt sandwich- how would you even do that on the domestic machine if you used a lining too? maybe flip up the top piece away from the back piece and carefully cut? -a hint about that would have been nice!

Here’s all the pieces cut and I had to trim down several pieces, like the left and right piece were NOT the same, same with the sleeves, I guess because it’s knit fabric and because I cut apart the sweater with scissors!? It just seemed so willy nilly.

Then it was time to sew the pieces together, they were THICK! and at the end of the directions it says to finish the raw edged with binding, I tried to add binding on each seam as I did it, and it got really bulky! and really it should just be zigzagged, actually doing that around each piece after it’s quilted and trimmed would have helped a LOT! like other garment sewing, you zigzag the raw edges on the individual pieces before anything else, OR when the seams are sewn together.

It’s finished and I don’t like it!

I like the look of it, but the shoulders are too wide for me- which I guess many sweaters are but it’s just more pronounced when it’s a stiff jacket, that should be more tailored I guess.

I’m going to list it for sale at the Emporium one of these days, we’ll see if it sells.

It was a fun learning process, I’ve sewn garments for me and the kids before so I’m not new at this, I know I’m more critical of stuff for myself!

I might try it again, now that I have the templates cut out, then I’ll try with batting, AND I think I want to lay out the pieces on the floor and measure what size it would with a quilt, then make a big top to fit the pieces and quilt it all like a quilt then add the templates and maybe have wiggle room for seams or placements of blocks.

Sorry Edyta, I didn’t like your pattern that much, it’s a neat idea/ method, the pattern was just poorly written IMHO- a reason why I don’t do garment patterns or purses etc. anything 3D is really hard to write patterns for, but pictures for step by step was good and I see that in purse patterns too, but I felt I wasted a lot of fabric, maybe make one is a size SMALL and one in XL and guess the middle part, so something like 8-12 big stars, 15-24 small stars.

I do have a funky QUBE set that Edyta was part of designing for Accuquilt– I don’t know if they carry it anymore, it’s called Serendipity.