Close
Enter your
text here

Behind the Seams: Nova Quilt Coat

768 1024 admin

Yes I jumped on the trend! I have been thinking about making a quilt coat for awhile now and when I saw Tina (@tina1802) and Jessica (@maeberrysquare) were hosting a Quilt Coat Along I knew I couldn’t wait any longer!! 

CHOOSING THE PATTERN

I think I looked at every quilt coat on the internet before deciding on which pattern I would use. I complied a bunch of these onto a Pinterest Board if you are looking for inspiration. 

I found the blog by Brittney Frey on SuzyQuilts.com to be very helpful as well as this post by Audrey (@cottonandbourbon) SUPER helpful, so I went with the Sapporo Coat (recently renamed to Nova Coat) by Paper Cuts Patterns.

MAKING THE COAT

The Nova Coat is pretty easy to put together and I made a muslin before starting my final coat. I just used regular muslin (some people suggest making a muslin out of a thicker material that is similar to your quilted material). I did try the muslin on over a heavy coat, hoping that the added bulk from the coat I already had on would be enough to mimic the thickness of the quilted material. Once I felt comfortable with the size of the muslin I started piecing the quilt portion together. I determined how big each piece I needed to cut was and then laid out my “quilt tops” from there. I used black and white half square triangles, and black and white squares. I rolled a dice to determine the order/orientation of each of the blocks, giving me a truly random layout. 

Once the different pieces were pieced together I basted them as individual quilts. While the Nova Coat has a lining I decided I wanted to quit the lining and have exposed seams (see changes I made below) so I decided to quilt these pieces just as you would a regular quilt. 

I had just taken a Quilting With Your Walking Foot class with Jacquie Gerhing in January through my guild, Orange County Modern Quilt Guild. So I choose a design from her book, Walk to quilt my pieces with. The design I ended up going with is called Orange Peel. I also picked a contrasting color of thread to quilt with so the quilting would really stand out. 

Once all my pieces were quilted I cut out the different pieces I needed and started assembling the coat. If you are using the Nova Coat pattern I highly suggest watching this video by Jessalli Handmade, she clearly walks you through step by step on how to assemble the coat. It was very helpful for me to watch while I was assembling the pieces so I knew I was doing it correctly. 

After seeing a Hong Kong binding on someone’s quilt coat I knew I wanted to use the same technique. The Nova Coat only has 1 cm seam allowance so I did have to increase the seam allowance to give me room to do the Hong Kong binding but I was able to do that no problem. Every-time I joined two pieces together I would add binding to the seams, after constructing the coat I decided that I would need to stitch down the seams since they weren’t laying flat, and I wanted to reduce the bulk of the coat. On seams that were not intended to be pressed open (reference your pattern booklet for when your seams should be pressed open). I just simply bound them like you would a quilt. 

The last step was binding the coat edges, I just simply used biased binding and bound the edges just like you would a quilt, sewing it to the outside of the jacket with a machine and then hand stitching it to the inside (you could stitch this with a machine I just didn’t want to mess it up with it almost being done). I did this all the way around the body of the coat, and then around the sleeves as well.

SELECTING FABRICS

I chose to just use white and black Kona for the outside of my Jacket, I wanted something that would give me a classic look even years from now. BUT I did want to give the coat a pop of fun so I chose to bind the coat in Aegea Blue from Tula Pink’s original solids line. I also wanted to have some fun with the inside of the jacket so I used 108” Sketchyer Wide Back from her Linework line.

CHANGES I MADE 

I mentioned a few of these above, but if you don’t want to read through all that above I will break it down for you here: 

1. No lining

The Nova Coat pattern is supposed to have a lining, I chose to forgo the lining and finish the seams with a Hong Kong finish instead

2. Increased Seam Allowance

The Nova Coat pattern calls for an 1 cm seam allowance, I bumped this up to 5/8 in for a few reasons. First my machine doesn’t have a 1 cm mark so sewing the seam allowance at 1 cm would have been difficult without marking the machine. I wanted to do a Hong Kong finish on the seams and 1 cm wouldn’t have been enough to allow me to do this technique. I added to my seam allowance using this technique: 

3. No facing

The Nova Coat is supposed to have a facing that you add interfacing too, as Audrey from @cottonandbourbon mentions in her post because of the thickness of the coat you don’t really need the extra support of the interfacing. Unlike Audrey I took out the facing over all, I did this mainly because I wanted to bind my edges and I wouldn’t have been able to do so with the facing left on the pattern. This did give me a little bit of a headache with figuring out the cut of the coat without the facing but I think it worked out in the end

4. The neckline

The Nova Coat has a very high neckline and as I was deciding what the cut of the coat would look like I knew I wanted to change the neckline to make it more of a V shape. 

Are you ready to see the coat finally‽‽‽ 

  • A note on my label: The label is from Dutch Label Co, and is the same label I am planning to add to future quilts I make.

Did you see how I snuck my logo into the upper left front panel of the coat? Believe it or not I actually designed my logo before I started quilting and it’s simply a happy accident that it translates so well to quilting! 

WOULD I MAKE ANOTHER QUILT COAT?

Yes! This was fun process and I would love to make another, I actually have my eye on another pattern I would like to use and a slightly different technique. My quilt guild, Orange County Modern Quilt Guild, is planning a sew along for this summer so I think I will join them then to make my second coat!

Here’s the quilt coat round up: 

Pattern: Nova Coat by Paper Cut Patterns

Fabric: 

  • Kona Cotton White
  • Kona Cotton Black
  • Tula Pink

Thread: AURIfil Thread – Light Jade #1148 (used for quilting)

Quilting: Walking Foot Quilting on Domestic Machine 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.