Making the Hovea Jacket

I had been eying the pre-quilted Nani Iro double gauze at Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics for a while. They had several designs quilted just for the store. I took the photo below in April so some of these fabrics may be sold out. I knew I couldn’t get it anywhere else — unless I wanted to quilt it myself. So I decided to take the plunge, get the fabric with my Bay Area Sewists discount — and write a post about making the Hovea Jacket.

I am making version F, the cropped version with binding. I took this photo of the instruction booklet (excuse the glare and off-center photo). The cropped quilted jacket is shorter than the one in this photo.

The Hovea Jacket pattern by Megan Nielsen is available as a paper pattern and as a PDF in two size ranges: 0-20 (max bust/hip: 46/48″, 117/122 cm), 14-34: max bust/hip: 60/62″, 152/157 cm). I got a paper copy at Stonemountain. There are six, yes, SIX variations of this pattern, three different lengths — mid-length jacket, coat, and cropped jacket in unlined, lined, and quilted options. This pattern company designs for a height of 5’9″ (175 cm), as you can see on my sewing pattern height chart. I’m 5’7″ (170 cm).

I picked the fabric called “Ocean – Air Time” because I loved the beautiful watercolor design. It’s very light and will feel like wearing a cloud. There’s the Nani Iro fabric on one side, natural (off-white) muslin on the other side, with poly batting in the middle. It’s hard to capture what this fabric looks like in a photo. Here’s what it looked like as it was air drying in the bathroom after I prewashed it.

The pattern calls for 2 7/8 yards/2.6 meters (45″/115 cm wide) for size 14, which is the size I made. I bought 3 yards to give myself some flexibility in pattern placement, to allow for shrinkage, and because I wanted to make the cropped version a little longer. Also, this Nani Iro fabric is 41″ wide, another reason to get a little extra yardage.

Pattern adjustments

I bought the pattern in April and then bought the fabric at Stonemountain. Emily Guttman, one of the store managers made a cropped Hovea using this Nani Iro quilted double gauze from the store. You can see more photos of Emily’s Hovea on her IG feed (@emilygutman).

Her version is the inspo for mine. She told me that she added a little length to cropped jacket and additional depth to the pockets. If you make the cropped jacket, I recommend making the pockets deeper like Emily did. When I traced the pocket pattern piece for the cropped jacket, I saw that they were really shallow. Such shallow pockets are more decorative than useful. And I don’t know about you, but I want to be able to use the pockets of a garment.

I decided to add an inch of length to the body, the pockets, and the sleeves. I have really long arms, which is why I thought it couldn’t hurt to add a little length to the sleeves. And if they were too long, I could just trim them. These were the only pattern adjustments I made. The other changes I made were in constructing the jacket.

This is a loosely fitting jacket with a drop-shoulder, which is forgiving for various shoulders. I have wide square shoulders but I didn’t make any adjustments there. Also, I scrutinized the shoulder slope of the pattern and it had a gentle slope. So no square shoulder adjustment necessary.

Construction details

When I was looking at the required fabric for version F, I saw that it mentioned lining fabric. So I thought, oh, let me get some lining fabric and got this lovely batik fabric at Stonemountain that had a watercolor feel to it. Then when I was ready to cut my quilted Nani Iro, it dawned on me that I didn’t need the lining fabric because I was using pre-quilted fabric. Oy! What was I thinking? Clearly, I did not reading the info on yardage very closely. For version F, you get fabric, lining, and quilt batting only if you are quilting your fabric. Uh, duh.

It would have been nice to have the batik fabric on the inside, it would have meant adding an extra layer of fabric. For about two minutes, I thought, “What about cutting the batik fabric, pinning it, and just holding it together with the bias tape binding?” But if I really wanted that as a lining, then that would mean quilting it to pre-quilted fabric. Uh, no.

Extra pockets

I didn’t want the inside to just be a solid off-white, so I decided to cut two extra pockets for the inside of the jacket using the batik fabric. Here are the inside pockets, bound with some bias tape I had made from leftover Swiss dot fabric from my Girl Friday Blouse.

I also made yards of bias tape from leftover Nani Iro double gauze from my Array dress to bind the front pockets as well as the raw outer edges of the jacket. I followed the instructions found on Rocky Mountain Sewing & Vacuum on how to make continuous bias binding. (If the instructions don’t quite make sense, check out this video by @texiatelier on IG.)

Rocky Mountain also has a handy chart that does the calculations for you about the size of square you need for certain widths/lengths. I cut two 13″ (~33 cm) squares, each square makes 72″ (182.9 cm) of 2″ wide (~5 cm) bias tape (about 4 yards/~3.7 m). That was the largest size square I could make with my leftover fabric. I estimated that that would be enough to go around the outside edge and the exterior pockets. The pattern says view F needs 8 7/8 yards (~8.1 meters) for binding. I used the batik fabric to make bias tape for the inside seams (more on that below).

Here are the front pockets with binding.

Dividing the pockets

Even though I did add an inch of length to the pockets, they are still rather shallow. I put my cell phone in one of the pockets and the pocket really drooped. So I sewed a line of stitching along the line of quilting, three rows in from the center, about the width of my cell. 😉

Here’s what it looks like in front.

And here’s the pocket on the inside with the line of stitching.

After I did this, I saw that the instructions recommend “dividing the pockets into sections using topstitching.” Haha – I did that. And yes, it is an excellent recommendation. Otherwise you really can’t put anything in the pockets. Stuff will fall out.

Double gauze fabric isn’t very sturdy. The pattern instructions said to baste the pockets in place. I did do that but I also decided to machine stitch them in place with a very narrow seam allowance. I thought the pockets would need some extra support, especially since I had two sets of pockets.

The batik fabric is a crisp mid-weight cotton, which adds a little more structure and sturdiness to that part of the jacket.

I probably should have made the pockets deeper but I wanted the quilting topstitching to line up with the front pieces. And I wanted the pockets to have more of the green and blue design on them.

Sewing quilted fabric

I did a test on the quilted fabric with my walking foot and then I took off the walking foot and sewed the fabric with zero pressure on the presser foot. Sewing with zero pressure was fine so I didn’t use the walking foot. I have to say that using the walking foot is really slow. I really didn’t have the patience for it. I’ve found that reducing the presser foot pressure works well.

The quilted fabric was easy to sew but sometimes when I was sewing a seam, the very bottom layer of fabric would fold under. So I did some unpicking every so often.

Update: As I was hand stitching the bias tape in place around the outer edge of the jacket, I noticed that the machine stitches got smaller around the curves in front. My stitches would have been even if I had used a walking foot. And I should also mention that if I had needed to unpick any stitches in the curve, it would have been a pain because the stitches were so small. So please keep that in mind if you don’t use a walking foot on your quilted fabric. My advice is to test your stitches around a curve and see what works best with your machine. Or maybe switch to a walking foot around the curves.

Finishing inside seams

You can make this jacket reversible but I knew I didn’t want to make mine reversible so I did not bind my inside seams per the instructions. The instructions have you use bias binding to finish the internal seams. You enclose the entire seam allowance with bias tape. Because I was not making it reversible, I decided to finish my raw edges with Hong Kong seams. I made 1″ bias tape using the batik fabric.

Double gauze tends to ravel as you can kind of see in the photos above. So I wanted to enclose the raw edges. In this photo below, I pinned the other side out of the way so I didn’t accidentally sew it to the other side.

Here I pinned the binding before I stitched in the ditch.

Here’s what the inside side seam looks like.

Shoulder and armscye

The instructions recommend sewing and then inserting the sleeve, noting that during testing, this method draped better for the quilted jacket. So I followed the instructions, except that I finished my seams with a Hong Kong finish. I looked at Threads magazine’s article, “Hong Kong Armscye Finish” to see how best to finish the armscye. The article said to use 1 3/4″ wide bias strips for a 5/8″ seam allowance pattern but it was easier to make 2″ wide strips and then trim it down after I sewed it. To reduce bulk, I made the seam allowance more narrow around the armscye.

Last steps

The last steps are to attach a loop at the center back and bind the outer edges. Here’s the loop that’s basted in place and the bias tape going around the back neckline.

Here’s the binding going around the front.

Sewing the binding in place.

Then I pressed it flat. Double gauze is soft and drapey so I just used my fingers to fold it under and pin in place.

I decided not to stitch in the ditch because it might not look very good on the inside. So I basted it in place using Japanese silk thread, which is very slippery and will be easy to remove. (I got this silk thread from Britex Fabrics.) By hand stitching you have a lot of control. As I basted, I occasionally checked the right side to see that the width of the binding was consistent. And I noticed that the seam allowance on the bottom front curve on one side got a little wider, closer to 1/2″ SA, instead of 3/8″ (1 cm). I unpicked it and sewed it again.

And then began hand stitching it in place. This photo shows the basting and my hand stitching.

Needless to say, all these details take time. I will be hand stitching for a while. This can be a much quicker sew if you serge your seams, which is what Emily did, and follow the instructions on binding. Hong Kong seams take longer because you are doing each side of the raw edges.

Once I finish it, I will write another post, with photos. Stay tuned!