My Quilted Dress with FreeSpirit Fabrics

The Background

When I received my Fat Quarter Bundle of Valori Wells Murmur Fabrics by FreeSpirit Fabrics, I knew immediately what I was going to do with them (they were gifted to me). I had had a vision of a quilted dress for ages. This pack contained so many fun designs and colors that were perfect for doing some color-blocking, patch working, or quilting (whichever term you prefer— essentially the same thing) on the Saraste Dress by Named Clothing.

I chose the Saraste Dress as my “canvas” or “quilt backing” because it had big areas that would be perfect for adding fun detail, plus it had a casual, comfortable fit with feminine details.

I like to start my projects using My Design Line Sheets for planning and My Body Model for seeing how the pattern will look on my figure!

The Project

So…… If you want to quilt a garment for yourself I am here to show you how it is done—-or at least how I did it (I’m sure there are much more precise and complicated ways of doing this, but I’ll show you my method).

First, I cut out the strips of fabric—- 2″ wide and varying lengths (I used my rotary cutter, ruler, and cutting mat for this!

Second, I sewed the 2″ edges together in to lots of long strips.

Third, I laid those strips horizontal lines (as seen above) to figure out what configuration I wanted to sew them in. (Obviously you can do this project with any quilt pattern when making it into a garment, but this part is specifically for the pattern I made up.)

When quilting you don’t need to serge every seam. They will be covered by a backing. When doing this on a garment, we call it a “lining!”

Here was my finished “quilt top.” I quilted a large rectangle so that I could use it like it was one piece of fabric for cutting out the pattern pieces. (Look at all those bright colors. It makes my heart sing!)

*This would work with other quilting designs as well. Just make part of a quilt top and then lay your pattern pieces on the sections you want to have on your dress, skirt, shirt, etc.

I then laid the chosen pattern pieces on top, paying attention to what sections of the quilt top would end up on my dress, and how they looked next to each other as well.

After I backed/lined the quilted sections (I just cut out the original pattern pieces on normal fabric— I used the same Valori Wells pale blue print as I used on the outside of the dress) I put the dress together as written in the instructions.

I decided to add a fun trim down the front to give it more texture (above).

I used “Hexis Sky” for the main body of the dress (the pale blue is hard to see in this photo) and I used: Hexis Pink, Hummingbirds (in hot pink, orange and gold), Centers in Gold, and Dots (in violet and orange) for the quilted analogous color scheme down the front.

I really loved how it all turned out and my vision worked!! I have a colorful quilted dress that is super fun, bright, and yet as comfortable as a longggg shirt. WIN!

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I will normally be wearing this dress without pants but I happened to throw it on over my phillipa pants and loved it just like that! Also, I love any excuse to wear a flower crown….