My husband loves his fire truck and no fire truck is complete without a Dalmation! Well we don’t have a Dalmation, but we do have Ginger Pickles. So I made her a little jacket to wear to turn her into a Dalmation when she goes out on “calls”.

I started with a little safety jacket that she sometimes wears at night. It’s a little small, so I lengthened it. I should have widened it, too. I will do that next time. I traced the outline of the safety jacket to make a muslin. I made separate pieces for the collar and the under-chest straps. I then added seam allowance to the muslin and used them as my pattern pieces.

To construct the jacket, I used two layers of spotted fabric for all pieces (one body, one collar, and two chest straps). I added Pellon thermolan fusible fleece to the collar and the two chest straps just to give these a little more body. I made the collar and chest straps first. Then I basted them to one of the body pieces. I placed the 2nd body piece on top of the first, right-sides-together and stitched around all of the edges, leaving a turning hole. After turning the jacket right-sides-out, I closed up the hole and added velcro for the neck and chest closures.

At the urging of my husband, I made a little “STAY BACK 5 FEET” sign. The design was embroidered on a piece of bright yellow duck cloth backed by some medium weight non-fusible cut-away stabilizer. I trimmed the embroidery close to the stitching and then stitched the whole thing down on the jacket using my regular sewing machine. All done!

I’d like to make this jacket again, but a little wider the 2nd time. So I saved my muslin pieces in a gallon bag, wrote a note to myself about how to make the changes next time, and filed it away. Next time I see spotted fabric that doesn’t look like cow spots, I’ll pick up another yard and try again!