Inspiration Archives

Hello and welcome to my quilted coat overthinkings! You might have seen the recent roundup of quilted outer patterns?

Well, I’ve been thinking more and more about them because it’s the perfect spot where quilters and garment makers collide! A quilted coat can be a great way to scrap bust, or a great motivation for sewing a quilt top. I’m thinking that it could be great to use up some of my linen scraps, but could also be a great way to test the waters of quilting with quilting cottons without signing myself up for a whole Queen Size bedspread.

I’ve decided that there are 3 basic ways of approaching a quilted coat!

1) Improv piecing

There’s 2 basic ways you can approach improv piecing for a quilted coat: by making a large piece of fabric, or by improv piecing fabric into the shape of your pattern pieces.

Emily improv-pieced her Muna and Broad Grainger Coat, using leftovers from her quilting and piecing them until they were the right size for the pattern pieces! Check out her process here.

Above, you can see how Emily Improv-pieced until they were large enough that she could cut out the pocket pattern piece. I like the idea of this method because it’s doing only as much work as necessary, and it’s not going to leave me with more scraps that I then have to find a use for!

SewDIY improv pieced the fabric to make this quilted coat!

The pattern is the Ayora which was included in the recent roundup of quilted outer patterns here.

The quilted coats below are made by sewing fabric together to make large fabric bolts, which the pattern pieces are then cut from. This can be an easy way to ‘get in the groove’ and just keep going, but if your motivations are scrap-busting, then cutting out your pattern pieces will be creating more scraps!

2) Purposeful Piecing

You could use a quilt top that you’re sewn to cut out your pattern pieces or you could use the pattern pieces to plan quilt pieces!

If your chosen quilted coat pattern has straight edges, that can be handy to align your purposeful quilt pattern with!

Check out this Grainline Tamarack which was partially made from a repurposed quilt (pictured)

Romy also made a great quilted Tamarack Jacket.

The Lilac Elk used a quilt pattern to make a great Tamarack.

Katie Kortmann improv pieced a bright and colourful Tamarack.

3) Fabric which looks scrappy

The jacket below is made with fabric that has different patterns on the same fabric, so the finished jacket looks patchworked but requires none of the effort (also makes sure that the points on your squares align perfectly with each other)!

Over on the Spoonflower Blog, MegMade shows how she made 2 super easy quilted jackets!

This pink jacket is made using the Spoonflower Fill-A-Yard® which lets you print multiple designs together, and an be a quick way to give a patchwork look.

RTW quilted coat inspo

Of course, I had to include a little image dump of inspiration from ready-to wear quilted coats- I’m particularly partial to the abstract and the scrappy ones myself, but maybe you’re a secret traditionalist and you’re smitten with the flying geese or log cabin (the only 2 quilt blocks I can recognise)!

The quilt coats above are all from Haptic Lab, and I love how they’ve kept the quilt look with the square hem and bias bound edges.

Below the quilt from Vacilando Studios bring applique and large-scale patterns to the quilt coat, which look like the designs were made for the coat shape, rather than looking ‘quilt becomes jacket’. The scrappy one is particularly excellent.