Felted Jacked with Seamless Piecing Day One

Our first day of class was terrific! Needlework and Textile Guild of Michigan had Barbara Skimmins today and tomorrow to teach her "seamless piecing" method using felted wool. The day began with a lecture and trunk show of her fabulous art garments. After lunch, we began our class.

Our wool fabrics were supposed to be pre-felted for class by washing in hot water/cold rinse and lots of agitation until felted properly. We were to have a muslin, fitted and sewn together. The instructor had us draw a design on our muslin. Here is my sleeve.
I made a teardrop shape. There are similar shapes drawn on the other pieces of the jacket. We took the muslin apart and used it for our pattern to cut out the jacket.

Next comes the fun part. We are going to cut design elements out of the jacket pieces, leaving a hole . As if you were cutting dough with cookie cutters. Only out of our fabric. Scary huh! Cutting a big old hole in a beautiful piece of wool! I will cut that teardrop out of my sleeve. The hole will be "plugged" with another piece of wool in a different color. It will be sewn into the hole using decorative stitching with heavy thread. Thus--"seamless piecing".

The teardrop shape will not be just one piece of fabric, but several pieces patched together like crazy-quilting, with decorative stitching.

So far, so good. My jacket is cut and ready for the embellishment process tomorrow morning. There were 20 people in class today. Twenty ladies who definitely know their stuff. These are all seasoned sewists. It was a great day. I am so looking forward to tomorrow.