The Making of a Costume: Vest (Part 2)

I need to apologize for this next post, because I was a doofus and forgot to take a bunch of in-progress photos. But I'll walk you through it.

After I finished the lining of the vest, I needed to make the fashion fabric side.

The front panels of the vest were pieced together using the marigold, burnt orange, and chocolatey- brown linen fabrics I had purchased.

The back panel was going to be a warm chocolately-brown linen, and I was going to use a "slashing" technique to expose the colorful lining underneath, reminiscent of the Renaissance type clothing.

After I made the back panel, I marked where I wanted the slashes with chalk, and then cut the fabric accordingly. (See the green of the lining peeking out between the slashes?)

In order to prevent fraying, I used fray block as well as carefully hand stitching around each slash. However, when everything was said and done, I wasn't too happy with how it looked. There was no "dimension" to the slashes, and while you could see flashes of color, I wanted it to be more "obvious".

So I took strips of fabric -- the same color as the lining, attached them to the lining, then "puffed" them out in between the slashes.

Here's the front with the attached buttons. The buttons are only for show, and I use some hidden clasps on the inside lining.

And the ONE nice thing about this vest? It's finished on BOTH sides, so that it is completely reversible! I would need to add frogs to the "lining"to hid the small clasps, but it works in either direction!

Here's what it looks like on the inside (albeit a bit wrinkled).