Blazer Bonanza: Revisiting the Discarded to Divine Vest

One thing I am trying to learn as a designer is this: when the public speaks, I need to listen. I was so flattered when the St Vincent DePaul Society used my vest for their photo promoting the Discarded to Divine auction . I should have probably anticipated what would happen next. I've got many many requests for a one-of-a-kind piece that I have already donated to this charity foundation!!! And now I am realizing that it might make sense to have a couple more of those lovely things around! So I am rolling up my sleeves this week and putting the focus on vests.

I thought I would share with you some of the lessons I learned from making Discarded vest that I wanted to remedy and make it easier and better for myself.

The original vest took me about 25 hours to make. And I still had to cut some corners in order to finish it on time. So, I wanted to find a way to avoid such intense labor, and also have the product be totally solid as well. With the last vest, I learned that it is sometimes easier to hand sew than to sew with the machine. In fact, in the little green vest you will see throughout this posting, was almost completely sewn by hand. And I saved a lot of time!

An area that caused me a lot of trouble was finishing the armhole of the vest. Finding a way to clean it up was challenging and tricky to sew with the machine. For the Discarded vest I cut some bias strips and sewed them to the outside of the armhole then flipped the strip inward, and hand stitched the other side down. This is tricky to do cleanly. I knew there had to be a better way.

There is!

For the green vest and the orange vest I am taking another route. I am using the already sewn-in lining of the blazer and pulling it through the armhole to enclose the raw armhole edge. As you can see in the photo to the left, the raw seems of the armhole are showing and the extra lining is hanging ready to be used.
In the end, I must hand-sew the armhole seam, but I would have to do it anyway so I cut one step by not needing to sew on any extra fabric.

Another plus for using the lining around the armhole is it creates a ruffly-bunchy effect as you turn it under and around. At first I wasn't sure the look would be right, but as you can see in these two pictures below (especially with the green vest) the ruffly edge fits right in with the ruffles that are working around the neckline.

Keep posted the next few weeks and check out my site: www.experiencevagadu.com or my Etsy shop to see how to purchase one of these great pieces!