Slow-stitch your way to a jacket that will forever take pride of place in your wardrobe. You can make creative use of beautiful stash fabrics while enjoying a design challenge and the pleasures of sewing by hand. The resulting garment features layers of pattern, soft texture, and color.

The jacket shown offers a mash-up of techniques I used with precious fabrics from my stash. The main fabric was a linen canvas home decorator print featuring hand-colored birds, which had resisted my previous design efforts because the birds were closely spaced. If I cut a garment section, several birds would lose wings, heads, or limbs. I needed a different approach.

Sources of inspiration

Twenty-some years ago, textile artist Rosemary Eichorn wrote about raw-edge appliqué. After years of trying to turn under the edges of appliqués for a tidy look, I discovered that raw edges offered lots of opportunities.

More recently, Threads author Mary Ray interpreted the traditional Japanese mending technique of boro with inventive seaming and stitching. This slow stitching and the control that accompanies handwork was appealing to me.

A friend introduced the practice of making small layered and hand-stitched samples using fabric scraps. As I drew fabric from the pile of options and began stitching them together into little compositions, I had a light bulb moment for handling the bird fabric.

I’ll walk you through the design process I developed from these inspirations.

Boro without the birds

My jacket originated from a desire to highlight my bird-printed linen, but birds aren’t mandatory. Look for a fabric that has motifs that can be isolated. Cotton/linen canvas prints available at home decor or quilting stores are a good place to start. They lend themselves to this layering process. Because you’re cutting the prints apart, you can make use of…