Ellen from Tampa, FL, had a wonderful stitched piece awaiting finishing when she read last month's Needlework Nutshell. The jacket idea appealed to her. Look what she did!

"The aida cloth is light blue and I found a velour jacket that zipped up the front. I sewed piping and bias tape around the stitched piece and then used the zig-zag stitch on the bias tape. If I need to, it should be very easy to remove. The jacket's sleeves were serged on with the serging face out. I didn't like the way that looked and chose more piping and bias tape to cover those seams. There was a hood, and I cut that off to about 2 inches, and used the different colors of piping and bias tape along the inside of the collar (formerly part of the hood) to give some additional weight to the velour and make it lay back like a collar. The bright colored tape and piping was chosen to match colors in the stitched piece."

How great is this?!

To see the newsletter article, visit the Needlework Nutshell archives.

More than a year later, I, Jen Funk Weber, have a jacket of my own!

I hemstitched around the African Night design, then appliqued the piece to the jacket with an invisible stitch.