SEWN: Fibre Mood Giselle in pre-quilted fabric

Fibre Mood Giselle (affiliate link)… made for pre-quilted fabric which can be challenging to come by, and sometimes also challenging to sew. I thought I’d share a bit about this one because of both those factors – but first hello! It’s been quite a long time since I blogged; a full-time job, freelance jobs, and parenting knocked the wind out of my blogging sails.

Disclaimer: I work as a freelancer and Fibre Mood is one of my clients, therefore I did not buy the pattern myself. Links to Fibre Mood are affiliates. The fabric was given to me by Polytex, the fabric supplier for the Fibre Mood collection of fabrics, and the matching thread was provided by Mettler. I am not obliged to blog about this make. Of course, my opinions are my own and I write because I want to share what I think is helpful information. But as you can imagine there is always going to be subconscious bias.

Pattern details

Fibre Mood Giselle is from issue 16 which was autumn 2021. Quilting was a trend; and who doesn’t like the idea of a cosy quilted coat? Particularly for me, the fashion girls I saw on Pinterest made it look hip and cool.  

Features: centre front zip, standing collar, side splits, side seam pockets, bias tape finishes on areas not overlocked. For the cord at the waist, I’d recommend cord at least 0.5cm thick (my first try was too thin and looked like embroidery floss relative to the bulk of the coat) and also getting some cord stoppers. 

As someone who cycles for transport, love the side splits. In the rain and cold, the fronts covered my thighs without riding up so the tops of my jeans stayed fairly dry! Happy with that. If that’s not a thing for you, check out some hacks that Sylvia did to the same pattern- cord stoppers, patch pockets, no side slit.

Pre-quilted fabric

I used 100% nylon pre-quilted fabric in the copper colourway, 170gsm – it is one of the fabrics made for the Fibre Mood issue 21 collection. Stockists are across Europe (you can’t buy it from the Fibre Mood webshop), the list is here. The fabric is unexpectedly lightweight (vs what you might think when you see it) and the outer fabric feels a bit like what you get in very thin nylon summer rain jackets. Or Uniqlo ultralightweight down jacket if you’ve seen those before? The wadding is a little bit lofty compared to e.g. an actual handmade quilt, but not thick like a fluffy duvet of course. I love the idea of pre-quilted fabric to save time if you want the quilted effect.

The fabric listing says it is waterproof for jackets and ponchos etc, and was certainly effective for 6min cycling in the rain (there was an unexpected shower when I left the house to go to town!). See picture…

I think the colour is more accurately called “cinnamon rose” according to the internet (I had to google a colour scheme for some help before settling on the burgundy!). It also comes in a green colourway.

Sewing Fibre Mood Giselle

This was not a quick and easy sew, mostly because of the special handling required by the fabric. I think I made mistakes every step of the way even though the construction is quite straightforward! Here are my top tips and also things to check so you don’t do what I did:

• Wear a mask when cutting – this tip from @sewuthinkucan If you’re sensitive to fluff and dust, it is worthwhile!
• Baste the hem immediately after cutting – do this within the seam allowance, eg around 5mm from the raw edge. This stops the quilting from coming apart. It is important to do the hem as the front and back pieces are subject to a lot of handling before getting to the point where you close the raw edges.
• Walking foot – helps with the shifting. But honestly, my cutting wasn’t particularly straight anyway given the “puff” factor of the fabric. And also since the fabric is quilted, bits of inaccurate stitching won’t really show. Still, better to get a better result than not.
• Baste/glue things in place before you sew – the collar before you stitch in the ditch. The placket with the snaps. The zip placket…. thread or glue, doesn’t matter. Helps with the shifting.

• Narrow foot for stitching down the bias tape at the hem – I have a narrow straight stitch-only foot, but you can also use a zip foot if you don’t have one. The walking foot didn’t cope with the differences in thickness under it in some parts, see picture. This was where I was trying to secure the binding to the hem (last step after understitching).
• Placket with snaps – the top of the placket is curved so check the positioning of both sides of the snaps before you actually install them. They have to be close to the (folded) outer edge. I set mine too far back and that meant I couldn’t install the bottom half of the snap without running into the zip. Solution: have to sew the zip placket again and get some more snaps to fix it. 

Styling and accents on Fibre Mood Giselle

To be honest I wasn’t really sure what to do with the colours. As you’d expect it was virtually impossible to find a similar shade of copper/cinnamon rose so it had to be a contrast. I googled colour schemes and came up with a lot of wedding stuff. Burgundy was definitely a theme across the schemes! Then I remembered I had burgundy Tencel^TM leftovers from this skirt, so that came in very handy.

I’m wearing it here with my Petite Knit Festival Sweater and my favourite small person decided to photobomb as well. (He’s wearing all me-made as you’d expect, the joggers are a hand-me-down from his brother and I’m happy that still works out sometimes.) Add in some RTW wide-leg jeans and Doc Martens and I think it’s a pretty good outfit if I say so myself! I’ve enjoyed taking the coat out when I’ve been doing errands and didn’t fancy carrying a heavy raincoat. All up: very pleased with the result.

Till next time

Kate x