The Beautiful Quilted Coat

Betsy Green

Sep 18, 2023

3 min read

I live in Florida. I don't need a coat. But I wanted to make one so badly. Quilt coats have been all the rage in the quiltaverse for the past few years. My FOMO (fear of missing out) was real! So I decided to do something about it!

I had started a "One Block Wonder" quilt a few years ago using this amazing Alexander Henry Fabric, "Zen Charmer". When I say a few years ago, I mean like 2015 (ok, so eight years). I had all the fabric cut and the hexagons sewn. I had it on my design wall for several weeks but could never settle on a finished layout. So, it went into a U.F.O. (unfinished object) bin. It was pulled out and put back up on the wall several times over the eight years, but I was never content with the layout.

Zen Charmer fabric used in the quilt coat — "Zen Charmer" by Alexander Henry Fabric

Finally, once the quilt coat bug bit, I knew what I could do with the lonely blocks in the bin. They were practically calling my name at that point. I pulled them out, arranged them on my wall once again. This time it only took about a week and I was happy with their placement. I went ahead and sewed them all together, chose a backing that would be the inside of my coat and started the quilting process. I had some wool batting that I had bought for an earlier project that I ended up going a different way with, perfect! I chose to quilt it using the "Three Tours Wavy Stripe e2e" pantograph by Joyce Lundrigan.

After quilting, I decided I needed to wash and dry it so that it wouldn't shrink after sewing. Good thing I did that, because after it was dried, I only had about 70% of the fabric that I started with. In fact, I was actually planning to make a significantly longer coat, but in the end I am happy with the length it ended up being. Happy accident I suppose. It took some arranging, and rearranging and rearranging but I finally got the pieces laid out in a way that I felt they would look like the colors flowed properly. I didn't want it to have a color block effect once the pieces were assembled.

Have I mentioned that I don't normally sew clothes? After all the time that went into making this quilt (eight years after all, LOL), it was a bit nerve-wracking to cut it up into pieces to turn it into a coat, especially since I don't make clothes and pretty much the last article of clothing I made was a skirt in Jr. High home economics class.

All went well (Thank you Mrs. Clark, Home-ec teacher) and here are the final results. I'm very happy with how it turned out. We had one day that was cold enough to wear it, December 26th. I went to Home Depot to look for Christmas Decorations on sale (practically a tradition in my house). An older man wearing a Harley Davidson T-shirt and leather coat, riding an electric scooter shopping cart stopped me to tell me he loved my coat. That made my day.

If you want to make a One Block Wonder quilt, check out Maxine Rosenthal's collection of books. This coat pattern is Simplicity 8509 in case you would like a beautiful quilted coat of your own.