Fun With Fleece Part 4

It's getting to be a good time for lightweight spring jackets -- a perfect application for fleece, especially since they don't absorb water from those spring showers. 

Here's a jacket in the currently popular hip length style.  It's made from Butterick 6329, which wasn't designed for fleece, but works well with the material.  For the fabric, I chose a hand-dyed look rather than a solid in a very spring-like bright green.

Of course, I couldn't very well just leave it alone.  I chose some designs featuring plumeria flowers and butterflies from Embroidery Library (They label the flower frangipani, another name for the same thing, popular in different regions.) It isn't a spring flower, particularly, since it only grows in tropical regions, but how many people know that?

The original designs had the flowers in white and yellow, but I know that they come in pink as well, so I changed the colors to contrast better with the green.  

The designs on both the center back and on the sleeves are on top of a seam.  Just the seams under the embroidery had to be sewn before the embroidery, with all the other seems sewn after.  This isn't exactly the order described in the instructions for the pattern, but it worked well enough.  Embroidering over seams can be tricky on some fabrics, but it works really well with fleece.  Just just a solid sew-in stabilizer to make sure the design doesn't come apart at the seam later.

I wanted a small design for the front to echo the others.  I extracted this single flower using my Florini Total Control software.  Having the flower the same scale at the others works well, rather than having a whole design made small.

Here's the back of the jacket.  It's fun having something bright and spring like to wear on these days that can still be a bit chilly.

Come back next week for more fun with a sewing machine!