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  • Vests for DH & DD

    My husband wanted a vest. We started by choosing the multicolored leaf fabric. It's a print of a broad range of colors including lime green, a little of the darker green, orange, rust, red, dark red, brown, and black. I chose the rest of the fabrics using Jinny Beyer's color method and the portable palette.

    The pattern came from Alexandra Capadalis Dupre's Men's Vests. I don't recommend this book. She discusses a few vests that she and other's have made for men, but other than a couple of applique patterns, there is no instruction on construction. I found the book to be uninspiring, and for the next vest that I make for a man, I plan on using a commercial pattern.

    I used Carol Doak's Easy Reversible Vests for the inspiration for the design of the front of the vest. I cut strips from one (1) inch width to two (2) inches and pieced them using a quarter inch seam allowance. I did not use a foundation. For me, strips one inch wide are too narrow because you have to sew a lot, and strips two inches wide were too visually dominate.

    For the back, I used two methods from Judy Murrah's Jacket Jazz, stitch-and-slash (four layers) and symmetric bargello. Judy Murrah recommends butting the 2 pieces of patchwork together and covering the interface with bias binding or some other decortive trim.

    Because this is a jacket for a man, I decided to see what it would look like if I zig-zagged the stitch-and-slash on top of the symmetric bargello with a muslin under both pieces. I figured if it looked terrible, I could cover the zig-zag stitching with a black bias strip. As you can see in the detail image to the right, the zig-zag stitching hardly shows.

    I strongly recommend that you position your symmetric bargello with respect to a yoke or other details before you cut it out. If you can't tell, my symmetric bargello is not symmetric or very straight. I cut out the symmetric bargello portion of the back and then positioned the yoke on top of it. I was lucky that there was enough slop in the seam allowances for me to move the symmetric bargello around to get it to look mostly symmetric and mostly straight.

    I used Sandra Betzina's Gold Medal Vest Lining method to line the vest with the leaf print. I highly recommend this method of lining a vest. Not only is is very quick and easy, it also gives you a reversible vest.


    DD's Vest

    Using the scraps from my husbands vest, I made my daughter a vest. I really like the stitch-and-slash, so I designed her vest around that. I had a nice piece of symmetric bargello for the left front. On the right, I put an piece of the symmetric bargello down on an angle and crazy pieced my leftover strips around it. The back features the stitch-and-slash with diagonal strips and a bit of symmetric bargello.

    I used the vest from the Little Sprouts' Wardrobe by k.p. kids & co. and Sandra Betzina's Gold Medal Vest Lining method to line the vest with the leaf print. However, the vest lining method doesn't work as well with a toddler's vest, and I should have given the side to leave open more thought. You can see the stitching on the lower left of the back where I sewed the vest closed. I think it would have showed less if I had left the turn hole on the right.


  • Fairy Costume
  • Christmas Stockings
  • Child's Gift Vest
  • Child's Gift Vest2
  • Child's Gift Vest3
  • Jen's Sewing Room
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  • Time Saving Sewing Tips
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  • Links

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    [e-mail:Jen] Neefer
    19009 hits since August 6, 2001


    This page was last modified Thursday, 21-Nov-2002 11:30:43 PST

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