Star's Threads: July MAGAM - Finally finished

Sunday, August 14, 2016

July MAGAM - Finally finished - Vogue 8757

It's a few weeks late, but I'm finally finished! My July MAGAM "Opposites" Challenge was to make something from the opposite season. We are currently in the middle of a very hot summer, so my opposite was to make a quilted winter vest. Since the theme for July was my idea, I feel kinda guilty for being so late in posting, but I have some good reasons:

I ordered a custom color-matched zipper for the front closure. After waiting for it to come in, I realized that I forgot to add the height of the collar in the length calculation and had ordered the wrong length! It was too short! (Math never was my best subject!)
My lining was too short (which I knew it would be from the start) and I was trying to come up with a creative finish for the inside bottom but my mind was just blank (until yesterday - finally!)
Our refrigerator decided it had had enough on the last day of an 8 day, 100 degree+ heat wave and it quit working. So after living out of ice chests and doing some creative cooking for the last few weeks, I'm hoping it is finally repaired and working properly again.

This vest really wasn't a hard project - but as usual, I tend to complicate things with extra embellishments and stitching. I wanted to highlight some of the seam lines and used the tan satin fabric to make piping. After sewing the piping into the seams, I then trimmed the seams and spread the seams and topstitched each seamline.

Here's a view of the inside after the seam has been cut, the piping spread apart and topstitched.

The original armholes on the vest were very, very snug. I like my armholes a little on the looser side so I lowered them by 2 inches at the bottom of the armhole and tapered that up about 1/2" on the shoulder seam. The pic below shows before, after trimming, and after applying bias tape to finish.

After the zipper length disaster, I decided I didn't like the look of the zipper anyways on the front and thought that if I ever wore the vest open with the collar flopped down, the brass teeth on the zipper might catch on the quilted stitches and cause a bunch of snags, so it was probably a good thing that I ordered the wrong length! Instead, I found a vintage covered button kit in my stash. These buttons were passed down to me from my Nannie and they are probably from the 1950's (I'm guessing here) and I'm glad I was finally able to use them. As you can see, they come in three sections - the outside brass ring, the inside section that gets covered with fabric and then the bottom piece that snaps everything together. After cutting and hand sewing and small circle of fabric to the middle sections, they snapped together beautifully.

Views of the front. Each covered button has a large snap behind it - those took forever to sew on by hand!!

The old blouse that I used for the lining looks quite sharp! I didn't have enough material to match up the design lines on the print, but I think it looks ok. I mentioned earlier that I was trying to come up with something creative for the inside bottom hem. Because the length of my lining was about 1 inch too short, I needed something at least 2 inches wide for the bottom. I ended up using the ties from the blouse to make a band that is sewn into the bottom hem and then hand stitched to the lining pieces above it. Not my usual flashing finish for the bottom, but a more subtle look, which doesn't take away from the busy lining fabric.

And here it is on me! A bit grumpy looking in this picture, but it was hot again today and after putting on the jeans and standing in front of a fan for awhile, I managed to snap a few photos before I started sweating to death! This will be a nice and cozy vest in the wintertime!