Sew simple quilted jacket

Gimme shelter

It's been raining cats and dogs in London for what seems like months now, and with no let-up on the cards any time soon, I spent this crepuscular Sunday afternoon with the heating on, searching for a pattern for a mac, sou'wester or some kind of rain bonnet.

Nothing doing on the waterproof front, but I did find a smiley girl posing on the seafront with a bright red brolly in a lovely quilted jacket and, in one of my boxes of paper patterns, this skirt depicting a tree being struck by lightning:

Flashy

The jacket is called the Instant Quilted Jacket, which I must admit is a slight exaggeration, but it is made out of pre-quilted fabric, which is a bit of a cheat (purists and those with time on their hands could quilt their own) and the pattern pieces are all squares and rectangles, so it actually is pretty simple to make. Click through to the instructions here and here and here.

Same girl, different hairdo, same jacket, different fabric...

The Instant Quilted Jacket is taken from the 1982 book Stitch by Stitch Part 1, a compilation of the Marshall Cavendish partworks of the same name from 1978-79 (the son/daughter of Golden Hands?)



The half-circle lightning skirt is from this American 1971 McCall's pattern (35p in the UK):

The lengths we will go to

My old paper patterns are a separate collection and the illustrations are worthy of a blog of their own. But I couldn't resist including the section of the instructions about the appliqué tree and lightning... Just so you know, lightning first, tree second:

Absolutely cracking