Our county is next to two counties that have fairly large fairs in summer. Our county fair was Memorial Day weekend. I entered 6 things and won prizes. Here are (not the best) photos.
And here are some photos of the antique carousel from 1911 or 1912 at Oaks Park.
[Edit 7/26/15: New photos!]
Here is another post about vests. I do hope you aren’t tired of seeing posts about vests. The silver one has a higher neckline than the previous ones, but is constructed in pretty much the same way. The white one is a bit different from previous entries, as it’s a bit of a different style. It is double-breasted and has a collar. I made them for my friend Orange (he did the buttons and buttonholes because my machine needs to be serviced).
Front of silver dupioni silk vest with high neck and welt pockets with flaps
Back of silver dupioni silk vest, showing panels with eyelets and lacing for a better fit
Front of white cotton damask vest with high neck and wide collar (Regency era style), double-breasted front, and welt pockets
Another shot of the front of the white vest
3/4 view of the white vest
Back of the white damask vest with panels and lacing
Detail of the welt pocket on the white vest
The difference in the pattern compared to ones that aren’t double breasted is that there is a larger extension out from center front, away from the rest of the front, which creates a greater overlap. Instead of a basically V-shaped neckline, the neckline goes all the way to the wearer’s neck and a collar is sewn then inserted between the body and the facing. Unfortunately, I neglected to take step-by-step photos of the sewing process of this vest and the silver one. (But do see my vest entries, part one, part two, part three, as the majority of sewing is the same.)
The collar of this vest will stand up when the vest is buttoned all the way. You will want to make a mock up/fitting muslin, of course, so you can fit the vest to the wearer. The collar is a wide (2 or 3 inches) rectangle that is very slightly curved from about the shoulder seam to the center front and is one piece. You might need to experiment and see if you’ll have to make it out of 3 pieces (back and each front) because you might need some curving in at the sides.
When you have gotten to the point where you’ll sew on the facing is the time to add the collar. It gets sandwiched between the facing and the fronts (but just sewn to the back, not the back lining, which will cover the seam up later). The collar and under collar both need to be interfaced. So you’ll want to make sure the collar piece(s) and under collar piece(s) are sewn together first (any seams of collar and under collar, then collar to under collar, then clip corners and curves, understitch the long upper edge that is away from the neckline, and press the whole thing flat and right side out). Make sure you pin the collar to the neckline so that the understitched under collar side will end up being on the inside of the vest. Proceed with sewing the facing. When the back lining piece gets sewn in, the collar is sandwiched between it and the back piece. Proceed with the rest of the sewing, up to doing the buttons and buttonholes.
The buttonholes will be along the edge of the left front. You can add one at the top and one at the bottom of the right front if the underlap will sag and show. The buttons on the right front will correspond to the buttonholes on the left, and the ones for the underlap, and also sew non-functional buttons on the left front, as shown in the photos.
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Hello! Sorry to take so long with getting this part about the vest done.
Now that you have the pockets done, you sew the fronts to the back at the shoulder seams (shell not lining).
Shoulder seams sewn
Shoulder seam pressed
Shoulder seam pressed, from the wrong side. Don't butterfly open the seam, press the front toward the back.
After you’ve done that, pin the back belt into the side seam and sew the side seams. Press them, too.
I sewed the side seam then cut into the seam allowance so the back belt could go the way it needs to but the rest of the seam allowance can go toward the back.
The back belt sewn into the side seam
Then sew the buckle on the shorter strap
Now sew the facings to the vest fronts. Use a 1/4″ seam allowance and be careful to match up the corners and points. Sometimes the front gets a little stretched out from handling and the facings don’t because the fusible keeps them stable. I’ve had to trim pieces, but in a perfect world, you don’t. Don’t sew the shoulder edge or the side edge, just the edge that runs along the center front opening and the bottom hem.
The front facing is attached to the front
Trim the corners and clip the curves (to but not thru stitching)
Also make sure you don't catch the pocket bag in the facing when you sew the facing
The armscye facing is matched with the front lining piece
The armscye facing being sewn to the front lining
Armscye facing sewn to front lining
Front lining/armscye facing pressed
The front facing is being understitched--move the facing/front seam allowances to the facing side and stitch them down ~1/8" from the seam.
The front facing is understitched
Understitch then press. You’ll notice that a little of the front is pulling to the inside. The understitching does that to prevent the facing from being seen on the outside of the garment. Sew the armscye facing/front lining piece to the armscye of the vest front, just along the armhole edge. You can see in the photo below that the front pulls to the inside and that the shoulder edges of the facings are not sewn down. They will be taken care of when the back lining is sewn in.
The armscye facing is sewn on and understitched
After the armscye facing/front lining piece is sewn to the armscye, sew the lining to the other edge of the front facing
And stitch together the two facings where they meet above the lining. Stitch the back lining to the front/armscye facings at the shoulder seams. Press the seam allowance toward the back lining piece. Sew the right side seam of the linings together. Sew the left side, leaving most of it open.
Leave most of the left side lining seam open, but sew past the facings.
Almost everything else that has to be sewn will be sewn through that gap in the seam. Going through that gap, sew the back neckline (of the back and back lining), the bottom hem of the back, and the back armscyes. It’s all right that the back doesn’t have facings. Turn right side out and press. Topstitch if it doesn’t look like it will lie nice and flat. The lining I used is Bemberg rayon, so it presses pretty well, but on the clocks vest I used the anti-static polyester lining and it doesn’t press as easily.
Sewing stuff thru the gap in the side seam
Neckline, back hem, and back armscyes sewn
The lower part of the inside of the side seam
Close the gap in the left side lining seam by topstitching it.
Pull the longer back belt through the buckle on the shorter belt.
Press everything (always press throughout the sewing process). Using the pattern as a guide, or using a template to mark the spacing, figure out the spacing for the buttonholes and mark them on the left front of the vest. Remember, men’s clothing is always left over right. My patternmaking instructor always said, “Women are right over left. Men are left over.” And the instructor is a man. Women’s clothing can follow the men’s way (I think most non-US clothing is) or be right side over left.
I marked the spacing for the buttonholes with pins.
Sewing the buttonholes.
Before you sew the buttonholes on the vest, do a couple of practice ones with scraps, including the interfacing, to make sure that the buttonhole ends up the right size. Sometimes they can be too long or too short and the button either can’t get thru or it slips out. Also test the stitch density. Thinner fabrics will need a higher stitch density and thicker a lower. You want the stitches close together, like they are on clothes you’ve bought. It looks more professional. Look in your sewing machine manual or if you don’t have one, just mess around until it comes out right and make a note of the settings.
The buttonholes sewn
If you don't have those special buttonhole cutting scissors like my grandma had, put pins on 1 end of each buttonhole and put the seam ripper at the other end. Rip from that end up to the pin. The pin will stop you from going too far. Then press the buttonholes.
Sew the buttons on. To accurately match the buttons to the buttonholes, lay the buttonhole side over the other side, matching up center fronts. With a pencil or pen or chalk pencil or something, mark THROUGH the buttonhole onto the fabric on the other side. Then sew the buttons on those marks.
The buttons are sewn to the vest.
The finished vest.
[Edit: After having sewn at least 15 vests since I first wrote this, I have found that it’s easier to sew the facings to the fronts, leaving a bit so you have seam allowance to sew the lining to later, then sew the back linings to the fronts.]
Now the vest is done. Did you have fun? Did it take a long time? It takes me about 4 hours per vest, 1 hour of which is just the pockets. Time consuming but well worth the effort, wouldn’t you say?
Let me know if you’ve made a vest from these instructions and put a photo of the completed vest in a comment or a link in a comment if you’d like to share. Photos of my husband in the other completed vest are in part 1 of the vest posts. Also let me know if you have any questions or suggestions or if anything wasn’t clear. I want all my instructions to be clear and understandable.
Edit 2/18/12: Here are some photos of 3 other vests I made recently, for a ball on New Year’s Eve.
This was made from green and purple brocade for my friend R.
This was made out of duppioni silk with polyester lining for my friend S.
This was made out of polyester tablecloth damask for my friend S.
Detail of the vest for S.
This was made from polyester and metallic brocade with Bemberg rayon lining for my husband Rob.
Detail of the above vest.
If you haven’t made a vest before, you should make it out of muslin first. Not only will this enable you to get the fit right before you cut into the good fabric, you’ll be able to check the lengths of seams and understand how it goes together.
So first cut out the fabric and interfacing. Sorry, I couldn’t find any photos of the vest being cut out, just of it being sewn. Spread out your fabric and lay the pattern pieces on it. If you have a fabric with a design, lay the fronts so that you take advantage of the part of the pattern you want to show more. Weight the pattern pieces down. Don’t pin them. Why not? Pinning distorts. You can see if you take some scrap fabric, especially thicker or fluffier fabric, and cut out rectangles, one where you pinned the pattern piece and another where you weighted it and traced around it. Trace around the pattern pieces. We have used chalk from a chakoner, ball point pen and china marker. They don’t bleed. After you’ve traced the pattern onto the fabric, remove the pattern. Cut the pieces out of the fabric, cutting off the lines. (See, you don’t have to worry about the lines ruining your fabric.) With tracing wheel and tracing paper, mark the darts on the wrong side of the front and back pieces. On the right side of the fronts, make some light dots on the right side of the fabric where the pockets will go, just the opening, not the rest of it. Keep the pattern handy in case you need to refer to it while you sew. Before you start sewing, fuse the interfacing to the facings, welts, and underwelts. You should fuse a strip of it to the spot on the fronts where the pockets will go (on the wrong side, of course). Use a pressing cloth. I made one out of off-white silk organza. It takes the heat and I can see through it.
If you want to use velvet or a thick fabric, the welts for the pockets won’t work very well in that same stuff. Use something thinner, like satin or something.
The dart is marked on the vest back
I used the waxy kind of tracing paper. I don’t think you can get it at a fabric chain but you might be able to find big sheets at a specialty place that supplies higher end “couture” type stuff. You can use the chalky kind but it doesn’t stay on the fabric as long. To be really accurate when sewing darts, you can hand baste them with silk thread or pin them.
The dart is pinned and ready to sew
Start stitching from the hem end of the dart and go toward the point. Some people back stitch at the point, but some people chain off. Chaining off is when you keep sewing and run off the fabric, which leaves you a twisted “chain” of thread. This is less bulky, but do whatever you like.
The dart is stitched
Another image of the dart stitched
Chaining off the front dart
Lining dart stitched
Front dart is sewn
As you can see, the first thing you sew is the darts. The next steps are to sew the back belt pieces and the center back seams on the shell and lining. Unless your shell and lining fabrics are the same color, you’ll have to keep switching thread, which can be a pain. (Or if you have 2 machines, go back and forth.)
CB back/lining seam stitched
CB seam and darts
Back belt pieces sewn and clipped, ready to turn right side out
When you have that stuff done, you’re ready to make the pockets. If you’ve followed and practiced the tutorials, especially out of the fabric you’re using, you know exactly what to do. BTW, the set of welt pocket ones, not including the first and last links. Yes, it takes time. No, it’s not complicated. Yes, you can do it!
Just follow these photos.
The pocket section of the front is fused
The jig I made from Kathleen's tutorial
Welt piece in the jig
I'm folding the fabric in the jig and am about to press it on that fold
Here the welt is pressed, seen from the wrong side
Here the pressed welt is seen from the right side
1 side of the welt is pinned to the front
Here are the parallel lines of stitching from the front
I was working on 2 vests at once at this point, which is why there is different fabric.
The parallel lines of stitching from the wrong side
Here both sides of the welt are stitched to the vest front
Welt stitched, seen from the wrong side
Now the next thing to do is to cut between those parallel lines of stitching, from 1 end to the other, but with little triangles on the ends and a straight line in the middle. One point of the triangle meets the line and the other two ends meet the ends of the stitching.
Here the welts have been cut then turned to the wrong side of the fronts
Another view of the welts turned over. Make sure you press them.
See that little triangle that was formed when you cut the slit? Sew that to the welt.
On the right you can see the triangle sewn very closely along 1 of its sides. On the left you can see the stitching at the end of the slit.
Now that the welts are sewn to the fronts and pressed so they lie flat, sew one of the pocket bag pieces to the bottom of one of the welts, then sew the other. Then sew the pocket bag pieces to the bottoms of the underwelts. Press. Sew the sides and top. Check and trim the bottom and sew the bottom shut.
The pocket bag is sewn to bottom side of the welt
The pocket bags are sewn to the underwelts
The underwelt assembly is layered with the welt assembly
From the other side
The pockets are too long. See one peaking out from under the front, on the left? Mark with chalk or something, cut, and stitch the bottom.
The bottom of the pocket sewn. The pockets are now complete.
Since this was a lot of photos you had to wait for to download, and I need to eat something, the next post will have the rest of the steps on how to sew the vest. I will try to get to it later today, but at least you won’t have to wait very long. Thanks for reading and please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.
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In order to sew a really nice, well-made men’s vest with all the right pieces (the same method will work for women, but you have to make more adjustments), you need to do the following first:
Go on! I’ll be here when you get back.
Oh, you’re back? OK!
What did you notice about the vest(s) from a suit or from the clothing store? I’m sure you saw that there is a front with buttons, buttonholes, maybe some darts, and maybe some pockets. And a back. The whole thing might be lined. There might be a facing at the back neck. There’s a facing along the front edge where the buttons and buttonholes are, which might or might not extend all the way to the side at the hem. There might or might not be facings at the armscyes (armholes).
What did you notice about the pattern? These pictures are from 2 patterns I have, followed by my husband in one of his vests.
When you don’t have separate facing pieces and interface them, the vest won’t hang right and have strength on the stress points.
Take the front pattern piece and hold it up to yourself or to whomever you’re making the vest for. If the pattern is too long, fold it at the right spot and to shorten it. If it’s too long, cut it and add enough paper to make it long enough. The pattern should have instructions on how to do this if you aren’t familiar with the process. Do the same with the back pattern piece and make sure the side seams match each other. Same with the shoulder seams. Might as well check them, too. And adjust if it’s too wide or narrow.
Find some pattern paper. Not tissue or newsprint or poster board, but pattern paper from the fabric store or butcher paper or thicker white paper or oak tag/manila tag that’s big enough to remake the pattern. Don’t panic! This isn’t complicated and I’m holding your hand. Put the front pattern piece on the pattern paper and weight it down with weights or soup cans or your phone and camera and remote controls or whatever. If you have one of those pattern tracing wheels with the spikes, use that to trace around the sewing lines, not the cutting lines. If you don’t have that kind of tracing wheel, a tracing wheel for transferring marks with tracing paper will work or press really hard with a pencil. This will only work on paper, not that non-woven fiber with the grid or letters/numbers stuff for making patterns. If you’re using that or paper you can see through, put the pattern piece under it and trace it with black pen. At any rate, get the shape of the front onto the new paper. Oh, the front armscye might have too much or too little cut out of it, so hold the pattern up to the recipient and adjust it if necessary. After you have left an indentation with pencil or tracing wheel, go over it in black ink.
Along the shoulder seam and side seam, add 3/8″ seam allowance. Along the other edges, add 1/4″. Use a compass set at 3/8″ or 1/4″ to drag along the curves to duplicate those lines. Now don’t freak out if you’re used to patterns telling you to use 5/8″ everywhere. Take a scrap and try to sew 3/8″ and 1/4″. It’s more accurate. Label it with a style #, the current date, the name of the piece (“front”), and “cut 2”. Notch at the lower side seam where the back belt is supposed to go.
Trace the back pattern piece. If it’s supposed to go along the fold, you might want to scoop a little out at the lower back and add a 3/8″ seam allowance. Add 3/8″ SA at shoulder and side seams and 1/4″ everywhere else. The back armscye might have too much cut out of it. Really, there’s nothing going on back there. All the arm action is in the front. It should be a fairly shallow curve. Label it the same as above except only put “cut 2” if you have a center back seam; otherwise put “cut 1 on fold.” Label all the other pattern pieces this way.
If your vest pattern has a front facing piece, check the length of the seam against the front piece and trace it. If it doesn’t have an extension along the hem to the side seam, trace it from the front you just traced. If there is no front facing, make one by tracing the edge of the front piece from the center front at the shoulder down to the bottom hem and across the hem to the side. Then add a parallel line 2 3/8″ away from the first line and trace the relevant sections of the shoulder and side seams. Trim a bit off the first line (I have to check the pattern books to see where). Make a front armscye facing by tracing the armscye and the side and shoulder seams for 2 3/8″.
The back belt pattern pieces are probably all right, but transfer them to the better paper so they’ll stand up to the rigors of the life of a pattern piece.
The back lining is the same shape as the back shell, so you can use the back pattern piece for both, but only if this isn’t a production pattern. So under your “cut 2” or “cut 1 on fold”, write in GREEN ink the same thing.
The front lining is made like this. Trace your new front piece onto a fresh piece of paper, with GREEN ink. Set the front aside. Line up the front facing piece and trace the edge that doesn’t get attached to the center front of the vest (including the hem extension). Set it aside. Do the same with the front armscye facing piece and set aside. Now set your compass at 3/8″. Trace along the outer side of the lines you just traced from the facings (toward the outside of the pattern piece). Cut along the lines you made with the compass.
I mean, WHEN YOU CUT OUT YOUR PATTERN PIECES, cut OFF the lines! Don’t cut along the outside or down the middle, cut them completely off the pattern piece. (Why? Well, how fat is that line? If you left it there, you’d keep adding to the size of the pattern every time you made a new copy. 1/16″ adds up fast.)
And label the front lining piece with that green pen. You may have noticed that along the CF of the original vest front, there are markings for buttons and buttonholes. If you shortened or lengthened the front, you have to rearrange those marks and add to or subtract from the number of buttons.
If the vest front has any marks for pockets, compare the length of them to the length of the welt and underwelt pieces used in the tutorials. Use what length works for the size of the vest plus an inch on either end. It doesn’t really matter how long as long as you have the inch on each end and enough room to get your hand in to grab your pocket watch. In the particular case of the pattern I made, the welt is 7″ long and 3″ wide, the underwelt is 7″ long and 2 1/2″ wide, and the fusible (interfacing) patterns (done with red pen) are 6 3/4″ x 2 3/4″ and 6 3/4″ x 2 1/4″. Just rectangles. The pocket bag pieces are rectangles the same length but only long enough that they don’t stick out of the vest.
Whew! That wasn’t so hard, was it? 🙂
Now it’s time to go shopping!
Take the pattern with you.
What you need is:
Come home and wash the fabrics if they’re washable.
Next post will be how to sew it.
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I Sewed This! 