Simplicity 4109

I finally finished quilting a little pinwheel quilt for the kids which I'd started last spring using a jelly roll of the Make Life fabric line. The pattern is from Jelly Roll Quilts. Not too tricky but I did have some problems with the squares stretching on the bias. Here it is on our sofa:



The backing is a little cowkids fabric that I thought semi-matched the colors:


And I've been working on a little jacket that I've had in my patterns-to-sew pile for a very long time. This is Simplicity 4109:


Despite the fact that it's an unlined coat I decided to fuse the body with hair canvas and underline my wool with flannel, since I was using a very, very soft and floppy wool.

I ran up to the garment district yesterday, to Pacific Trim, to pick up some fusible hair canvas, but it turns out that I should have purchased it from fabric.com instead. At Pacific Trim I paid $12/yard, while the fabric.com price was just under $9/yard. Well, now I know to plan ahead for it!

This is how I cut my hair canvas.... if you know anything at all about tailoring, you'll likely want to avert your eyes and run away screaming. ;)

I use a marker to trace the pattern piece onto the non-fusible side, and then pull out my rotary cutter. I use the guide arm, which usually is used to ADD seam allowances, to subtract the SA as I cut out.



You can see the rotary cutter arm here:



So when it's fused, you end up with:


I've got the body mostly complete. My topstitching went a bit wonky around the pockets - which are an AWESOME design feature, by the way! I love them. You topstich down a panel on the front and end up with both pockets to slide your hands into and a little flap top pocket at the top. So ingenious!