• Finished Projects

Do you remember the vest that I was refashioning from an old coat? I finally finished it! And as you probably recall from my first post, it was inspired by men’s vest styles of the 19th century. So as you can see, I’ve decided to celebrate by acquiring Napoleon’s old office and converting it into a sewing studio.

I have to confess that the vest been almost done for the last two months, but I set it aside because I got discouraged. The neckline wasn’t laying flat and I didn’t like the fit.

To be honest, I’m a bit of a serial offender when it comes to setting projects aside when they are almost finished. In fact, this vest would have sat around at least until next fall if it weren’t for this blog. I only pulled it out because I thought you’d be wondering what happened to this project.

I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled it out and tried it on. I found that the fit was fine. I only had to move a button and a snap to fix the gaping neckline. It took less than 15 minutes to fix everything!

I lined it with scraps for another dress I made. To add a nice contrast, I sewed the lining in by hand using a green cross-stitch. I was sewing directly to the shell, since the edges are all raw, and I had to be careful not to sew all the way through the fabric. Otherwise the stitches would have shown. Since the vest is made of  thick felt, this was pretty easy to do.

The 100% wool fabric is very warm and soft. Its only drawback is that it pills up a lot. I found that “shaving” off the pills with a disposable shaver on a flat surface as well as liberal use of a lint brush helps keep the pilling at bay.

In honor of how easy it was to finish this vest, I’ve decided to institute a UFO (unfinished objects) challenge. My goal is to clean out my project basket of UFOs. Speaking of which, the rust-colored skirt in the first picture is the first project I’ve tackled and finished with my new UFO goal.