Adelaide world map vest top

Hello readers,

Are you out there? It’s been two crazy busy, but good – wonderful busy- months so the blog was a bit neglected. I did get to do a bit of sewing and knitting and I’ll share with you more soon.

Today I wanted to show you how I modified the Adelaide dress pattern by Seamwork to make a vest.

How to choose fabric

I chose a stiff, tapestry fabric. This world map fabric is made in Spain and I bought it from Barcelona when I was still living there. I’ve used it to make a million things. I made bags, made pouches and clutches and pillow-cases and even thought about making a pair of jeans, but never got the courage to try that… anyway, I still had a piece of this lovely fabric that I brought with me in Canada and wanted to use it for something special.

For this to look like a vest and not just a tank top (hmm… tank top!) you should use a fabric with a bit of body. If you’re going to layer this over blouses (like I plan to) you can try the tapestry section for some amazing fabrics that have always wanted a chance to become clothes.

After I made the Adelaide dress I posted about here, I was so excited about the fit of the pattern that I wanted to make more. I still want to make more – maybe a fall version? In wool? Crazy?

How to modify the pattern to make this vest

So I decided to sew a vest. I love vests! Strangely I didn’t own any. That had to be fixed.

 

The first thing I did was to decide where the vest top was going to hit and I chose my natural waistline. I knew this was going to be boxy, so with my frame (even though I love them) a long boxy vest wouldn’t look proportional. After I stitched together the shoulder straps and sewn the sides of the vest I folded it in half and created a shorter in the back – longer in the front, slightly V-shape but just cutting in an angle from the centre back to the centre front.

Hm… I’ll make a quick sketch, wait!

Does this make sense?

I was going to leave it like this, but my very wise partner suggested front darts to make the vest more fitted. So, wearing my vest on the wrong side, I pinned in place the darts, then stitched them.

I then finished the neck and armhole and bottom hem with self-made bias binding (that was actually a fabric remnant from my painted fabric napkins project!).

When I took this photos, I hadn’t decided if I wanted to leave it like this or attach snaps but went with snaps in the end. I love snaps, I could use them for everything!