I am just about up to quilting the pieces. This is a process, let me tell you, and it’s the very thing that at first I’m quick to say “oh, what have I gotten myself into.”
It involves first, pinning the lining to the jacket (wrong sides together) piece, then hand-basting up and down the jacket in rows, then machine-quilting these along those rows, (keeping jacket and lining grainlines aligned) then pulling the sewn threads so they are between layers, knotting them and THEN removing the basting. Fourteen pieces. Gulp.
It’s about, I figure, close to a half hour per piece so that’s 7 hours of quilting before we even get to sew the jacket pieces! BUT, before I start hyperventilating and cutting out an unlined, serged jacket (same jacket, that’s the actual style of this particular one) in a chevron silk twill, I must remember, that THIS is the reason I chose this jacket. To do this very process.
But I still might cut out that silk twill, LOL. Then at least I’ll have one jacket done in the time it took me to quilt two pieces of the couture version.
And truth be told, I have four other projects that are in between this too – some fast ones, some slower ones – and the Chanel jacket, which is a process, a lovingly precise, beautifully slow process.