Tutorial, part 2 - Quilting

For all quilted portions of the jacket, you will need your walking/quilting foot and quilting needles. 

A universal foot will not work well for this; a sewing machine only has feed dogs (the things on the sewing plate, beneath the foot, that pull the fabric forward as you sew) on the bottom, so the uppermost layers of fabric will move at a slower speed than the bottom ones, and by the time you reach the end of the quilt line, your pieces will have slid slightly, no matter how well you pin them. 

(It's like trying to eat a burger while only holding the bottom half of the bun; you might get some of the top half in each bite, but it'll probably keep sliding back as you eat.)

Try it if you don't believe us! You'll just be like ... 

The pattern pieces to be quilted are the two front yokes (piece A), the back yoke (piece B), and the two shoulder points (piece L). 

To start, you should have three cuts for each pattern piece: shell (wool elastique/cavalry twill), batting (low-loft polyester, sew-in quilter's fleece, anti-pill fleece, etc.), and backing (we recommend using the jumpsuit body fabric - wool gabardine or cotton twill). 

Using your tailor's/dressmaker's white pencil, copy the quilt lines exactly from the printed pattern onto your backing fabric. They are precisely ¾" apart, so an easy way to do this is to mark the top and bottom of each piece then use a see-through quilter's ruler to mark them and ensure they're exactly parallel.

You may also wish to mark the front side of your shoulder points for ease of recognition. 

We highly recommend reducing bulk in by cutting out the batting and backing in the following key areas:

   * the armscye edges of the shoulder seam

   * the bottom armscye edges of the front and back yokes

We recommend reducing the bulk by ⅜", plus the height of your quilted assembly (for "turn of cloth") - ⅛" should be sufficient, resulting in a bulk reduction of about ½" in the aforementioned areas.

(DS9/NEM duty jumpsuit yoke pictured)

(This should ideally be done before the quilting process, and before the quilted pieces are serged; we forgot this step until after the yokes were otherwise done - hence the pictures above. Whoops! The batting/backing can still be clipped out later, though. Obviously. Just do it first!)

We also recommend marking these bulk-reducing areas on your backing pieces. 

You may also wish to mark key quilt lines. 

Stack the three layers of each piece on top of each other: shell, right side up, batting, and backing (so that the batting is sandwiched in the middle).

We highly recommend spraying some temporary fabric adhesive between the layers; even with pinning and the use of a walking foot, the layers can still slide around a bit, causing unsightly puckering and/or misalignment.

Once the layers are loosely secured together, cut away the backing and backing at the aforementioned areas as described above.

Pin the layers together, then baste the perimeter of the assembly ⅛" or ¼" from the outside edges to further secure them. 

Using your quilting/walking foot (and gray thread), quilt along the lines indicated from the wrong side.

Once quilted, it will look like this:

Serge the entire quilted assembly. 

Repeat this process for the other quilted pattern pieces.

TIP: The back yoke will likely tend to contract somewhat due to the compound effect of slightly curved quilt lines - i.e. the flat fabric curves slightly over the batting between the stitch lines, thus ultimately making the back yoke too small from side to side - so pull the two ends apart while you quilt to minimize this effect. You might also want to quilt every other, or perhaps every third, quilt line then go back and "fill them in later." 

TIP: when quilting, always begin from the same edge - preferably the bottom edge of the yokes, and the upper rounded edge of the shoulder points. Switching back and forth can result in some unattractive contortions and puckers, like these: 

TIP: The spray adhesive will likely leave your finished pieces feeling rather stiff, so spray or briefly soak them in water to dissolve and/or wash out the adhesive, then set them aside to dry.


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