Prequilted Fabric Session 7: Dog Jacket Project

My little Cocker Spaniels have always enjoyed snuggling up and ratting and rooting around in quilts. And when winter comes they do enjoy when they go outside having a little jacket or sweater on them. And of course being a quilter what better thing to make for my dogs then quilted dog jackets. A few years ago I did some on the long arm where I quilted some regular dog-type fabric. Actually it was a duck fabric.

And on the reverse side I used a fleece. And in between put a layer of quilting. And quilted it up with little dog bones. Came out just absolutely wonderful and the dogs loved it. So you aren't limited to just the pre-quilted that you buy in the store.

If you're in a colder climb feel free to add that little extra layer of warmth in there for our furry friends by putting some fleece in there. Plus a layer of quilting. It just makes for a lovely little jacket. Dog jackets are actually quite easy. And you can certainly buy commercial patterns for them.

But if you'd like to have a little bit of fun try drafting your own. This was one that I drafted the other night for my dogs. It's very simple. It's nothing fancy, but it does work. And so I wanna show you some key measurements here that I took.

The first measurement that you're going to want to do is if you can get them to sit still for you is measure around their neck. We want the circumference of their neck. And we don't want it tight but we don't want it real loose either. Just barely snug. That measurement is the one that's going to go into here.

And I'll show you where to put that in a minute. We need from the base of the neck where you took the circumference measurement. And you're going to measure down just to where the tailbone is. Right where the base of the tail is. Where it starts where it connects to the body before it goes out and becomes a tail.

That's how long I took mine down. You can certainly make it shorter if you want. That was just an arbitrary point that I chose. You also want to measure around the belly in between the legs. And then you also want to measure in here.

Because this is the measurement on the dog where it's going to wrap around and hold on in the front. But it also juts out from the dog along their back legs. So it would be along their side from that neck. It's going to run to the side. That's how far down the dog the jacket will come.

Typically I found two to three inches especially on smaller breeds. On larger breeds you may have to play with it. The cross point is the approximate distance between the base and the neck and just behind the front legs. And that may vary a little bit. You may or may not want to draft it into your pattern as an all-in-one like I did.

You may wanna hold off on that. Draft the basic part of the pattern and then pin it in a piece and adjust it where you want. Or tape it until you can fit the pattern to the dog. That's another option. So as we look at this.

What we're going to do is we take a point and you measure up. And I found it was oh, approximately five inches. This is all a wing and a prayer. This is not science. This is not mathematical.

You're just going to have to trust me and play with it and be a little adventurous. Take point. And I found it was approximately you can see it here one, two, three, four. Right at about four and seven eights. Or four and .75.

Or five inches to where I want to draw my 6.75. And 6.75 is the neck for Hannah. Hannah was about, or I'm sorry, 6.75. Hannah had a 13 and a half inch neck. When I divide that half.

And that's because you're only seeing half of the pattern here. That's where I got that number. I take my tape measure and basically figure out where is 6.5. And that's how I came up with that arbitrary approximate five inch mark. Again I'm just drafting it on a piece of interfacing.

So you can draft it as many times as you want. Some people even like to use newsprint or paper bags. I mean, this is the cheap part. This doesn't cost very much. So at that point I drew a line straight across and that was my two inches.

And I add in an extra half of an inch and that's for my seam allowance. All right. So like the 21 and a half on the length that's the seam allowance. So here, my neck depth was two inches. Half inch for seam allowance gave me two and a half.

So that was right there. I decided I didn't want to have to miter corners on this jacket. So I just took something that was round. A glass, a bowl, whatever and rounded the edge of the extension here for the neck. All right.

I've got my measurement here which was the 21 and a half. The belly is going to run all the way across from the tip of the back the middle of the back all the way to the tip of the piece that's going to overlap underneath her. Again, I drew curves so that it was easier to bind. I rounded this out and I rounded that out. So that's how I drafted the pattern.

I'm going to have these required measurements this little form on the PDF for you along with Hannah's measurements. So you can refer to them. When I cut it out that's what my pattern looks like. Very very easy. In the past I've always used Velcro to attach the neck pieces together.

I just Velcroed on the dogs. And the same under the belly. And I would use a long piece. It didn't matter what I did. It seemed like they just the way they would move their neck and just some of their other movements especially in between grooming when the fur got thicker that Velcro just wasn't working.

So this year I'm trying a system where I have a little piece of elastic that I sew in before I bring the binding over. Or before I actually sew on my binding. So that it's well anchored in there. And I just attach it to the button. It's very easy to put it on them.

And they seem to like it. And then it gives a little bit of stretch there in case my measurements aren't exactly perfect. Or if their hair gets matted or is thicker after the winter of not being groomed. And the same thing for the neck. The button is just surrounded by some elastic.

When you get ready to bind it you definitely want to use your continuous bias tape. Bias binding that you made. I would start your tail anywhere along the straightaway. Again, you're gonna want to leave that long tail so you can join the ends. As you're coming around a corner with your binding let it follow the natural curve.

It will work in here. You are going to have to manipulate it. You are going to have to work it. You're going to ease it in. But try not to pull and stretch.

If you do you're going to start seeing this curved effect. I've got a little of it here and that's not too bad. And a lot of it steams out. But if you really do it you can really get a nasty effect. So just be gentle and let it work in.

After you have the binding on before you turn it you are going to want to come along anywhere that it's curved inward and just snip. You're gonna wanna come within a 16th of an inch of your stitching. You don't wanna clip through it. And you're just going to make snip marks to relieve that stress. So that when you bring the binding back to the right side for stitching down there's a little relief and it can all lay nice and smoothly.

On your outward curve that's a little bit different story. Because it's all bunching up and bunching together because of going around the curve. So in here, I actually make little v's and cut out little segments. Almost like notches on a dress pattern. You're just going to notch it out and then go ahead and turn your fabric.

You don't want to trim it back. You can. But if you trim it back then you won't have any padding inside the binding. And once again, your binding will wear. So I think you'll find that this can be a fun little project.

The nice part is it gives you a chance to practice curved binding. I mean, if you can make that curve and get the binding on there you're going to have no problem with a nice big gentle curve on the end of a baby blanket. Or on a king size bed quilt. Because you just wanted to round it and not miter it. It's a good way to practice.

It's a fun project. And the most important thing is it doesn't have to be perfect. The dogs are not critical. They will not critique you. They're just gonna lick your face and wag their tails and tell you thank you, thank you for my nice warm jacket.

So they're very appreciative and I think you'll have a lot of fun with it. So give it a try. And who knows, maybe you'll come up with an even better pattern. And if you do, I hope you'll share it with us.