A Hero Vest

I'm afraid that things have been a bit, well, boring on this old blog lately - mostly due to the massive amount of repeats that I've been sewing.  Now don't get me wrong, I love reusing patterns for many reasons.  You get to try them out in different fabrics and compare results.  You get to the master the techniques used in the pattern.  You can tweak the fit until it's juuuuust right.

But let's be honest, it doesn't make for the most exciting blog content.

So with that I'm excited to announce - "Hey, look I made something new!"  And with fall just around the corner in the northern hemisphere, it's actually seasonally appropriate!

The vest is the Women's Hero Vest pattern by Make It Perfect.  I wasn't quite sure when I was going to get around to making the pattern but then I fell in love with this super-soft flannel on an in impulse fabric shopping trip to Fabric Depot and with that the vest moved to the top of my list.  I also purchased the cotton/lycra ribbing at Fabric Depot but I didn't find out until I got home that the tubular ribbing wasn't quite as wide as I needed it to be so the bottom ribbing is actually made from two pieces of ribbing sewn together, rather than one continuous piece.  And while I'm confessing things I should also confess that I cut the bottom ribbing shorter than it was supposed to be only to realize that I couldn't rectify the mistake because I ran out of the ribbing that I just so happened to buy in another state.  Doh!  Fortunately, the ribbing seems to be high quality and I was able to stretch it enough to accommodate the missing length but I will say that this experience definitely taught me the importance of the saying "measure twice, cut once."

The inner fabric is a polar fleece from Seattle Outdoor Fabrics.  I looked at buying some fleece in other, closer fabric stores but nothing comes close to the quality of fleece that they sell there so I held out until I could make a trek up there to get some. The only other notion that I needed to buy was a separating zipper and I was able to find that at a regular big-box sewing store.

I was a bit worried about the sizing since I'm much smaller in the chest area than in the hip area so I decided to grade out around the hips from a size extra small to a size small and I'm happy to say that it seems to have worked.  As for the actual sewing process, it was lovely.  It was the perfect combo of interesting and not overly complicated.  My one recommendation would be to follow the zipper instructions that Toni has on her blog rather than the ones on the pattern.  The ones on the blog are for a fully enclosed zipper that really makes the vest look nice, tidy, and finished.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to cuddle up in the most cozy vest you ever did see.