Ziggi Sew-Along: Quilting accents

Hopefully by now you have jumped (crawled over? 😉 ) the hurdle of inserting side seam zippers and pockets into your Ziggi jacket. Tell the truth now, how many glasses of wine did it take for you to get them in? Well, right now you can breathe a big sigh of relief because today is another easy-peasy day. As a matter of fact, today is totally OPTIONAL. You don’t even have to do this step unless you want to, so it can be considered a “bye” in the game of sewing a Ziggi.

But for those of you who do want to add a bit of textural interest to your Ziggi, let’s get started. You will need whatever fabric/skin you are using for your jacket accent pieces, the sleeve head pattern piece, the yoke pattern piece, a ruler, and some kind of marking tool. I am using leather for my yoke and sleeve head accents, and if you remember, said leather is from a pair of consignment-store purchased pants. I am certain I paid more for the Ziggi pattern than I did for this leather. I am marking the stitching lines on the leather with a white Chakoner, and since I am working with leather, I am also using a teflon foot for my Bernina. If you have a quilting bar you could also use it instead of marking lines on your fabric/leather, but the Chakoner did not create any problems on my leather. You might decide to add a lightweight batting or a piece of flannel as a backing for this quilting step: I chose not to because the leather has plenty of body without adding another layer. Your call! I also decided to go with a traditional grid pattern for the design, mostly for expediency. You could easily come up with a more unique and cooler stitch pattern than I used, but since the main fabric of my jacket is pretty busy this choice seemed appropriate.

To get started, I found 2 pieces of leather that were large enough to accommodate the sleeve head pattern piece. No worries about grain lines here since skin does not have any; you can lay the pattern pieces out any way they fit. Freedom! I roughly traced the sleeve head pattern piece onto the leather, and then just started marking lines. I was careful to make the second set of lines at a 45 degree angle to the first lines, but again, that is a matter of design preference.

The chalk grid is complete! Obviously, you might want a different stitching pattern, and you might choose a different marking tool that works best for your fabrics. In this case, the chalk comes off easily with a damp cloth and shows up well during the actual stitching process. Just be sure you do not use anything permanent to mark your stitch lines.

Next up is your actual stitching. It is definitely tough to see black stitching on black leather, so you will have to trust me when I tell you I used a 3.25 stitch length and a straight stitch. The teflon foot and simple stitch pattern made this a breeze. This is your pay-off for getting thru inseam pockets and zippers, ladies! 🙂

Onward to cutting. I love rotary cutters, and they work really well on leather. Cut around the sleeve head pattern, and be sure to snip the notches marked on the pattern piece. Notice that the sleeve head pattern is printed side UP in the image above, right? Right???

VERY IMPORTANT: Flip your pattern piece over for the second cut so you get a right AND a left sleeve head. Sleeve head pattern piece printed side DOWN in image above; check!! Make very sure you repeat this process when you cut out the yoke pattern piece.

Two sleeve heads (1 right and 1 left) and 2 front yokes (1 right and 1 left) ready for assembly on my Ziggi. Are you as excited as I am about how your jacket is coming together?

Happy sewing!

Maris