Growing the Relationship (Peony Vest)

I'm getting to know more about my new friend, and it's going well so far....lots to learn, but going well :)

Some General Pattern Notes ~ 

 If you look at the envelope renderings, you can see that the rounded front is on the left side of the top, the right side of the vest.  The pocket (should you choose to have one) is attached to the rounded front piece, so lay out & cut according to where you want the pocket.  I'm right-handed, so I wanted it on the right side.  There is no mention of this in the instructions.  Actually, there are a LOT of construction details that aren't mentioned in the instructions, but they are LOADED with creative ideas, suggestions, & helpful hints in the artistic/design end of things.

So, if you want your hand held with fitting & construction details, Diane's patterns are probably not a good fit for you.  If, however, you like the jump off a diving board into a lake full of unknown & fabulous possibilities, Diane's patterns just might be the perfect platform for you!

Some notes about the fitting process ~

I cut out a straight size Small, but made quite few alterations right off the bat, before sewing up the first (of two) muslins:

• Forward shoulder & sloping shoulder (usual adjustments for me, but I ended up doing both of these adjustments even more extremely on the second muslin)
• Some darts in the front side pieces, and nipping the waist in, for a bit more shaping.  (Note:  the description says "The top and vest are easily fitted with bust darts included in the front seamlines."  Since there is no further mention of bust darts anywhere in the pattern, I guess she means that YOU can include bust darts if you want to.   Which I did do.)
• Much shorter.  3-5" shorter.   Each of the pieces, back, side backs, side fronts, & 2 fronts, have creative room for varying the lengths & hem shapes - I made them all shorter, and played around with the hemline shapes a bit too.
• Cut the armscyes in by quite a bit, & rounded the top of the outer shoulder piece, to avoid the Gladiator Look.
• Rounded off the neckline of the side with the point.
• Made the pocket a bit smaller, in order to fit the shortened piece.

The Piping Process:

The first step was cutting out yards of bias strips from my silk charmeuse.  Diane includes instructions on making continuous strip bias - I've been wanting to do this, so I tried her instructions.   The slippery nature of the charmeuse presented some challenges, but I'm OK with what I ended up with; I'm sure it would be much easier with a more stable fabric.  These pictures show what I did, but since they're the only pics I took, it's not designed to be a detailed tutorial.  That said, my hint about using a smaller cutting mat may be helpful to some of you :)

Cut a rectangle of fabric, and fold the opposite corners over to meet in the middle.
Sew this seam up (RS together), creating a tube.  Note:  Since each end of this seam has one corner end of the fabric, and one straight edge, the seam end isn't a clean ending.   I didn't worry about it...the triangular ends of your fabric end up as scrap pieces anyway.  (Which the frugal me, of course, saves for future use!)

Diane's instructions say to use scissors, & basically, just keep cutting a strip of fabric, flipping your tube over & over. If I tried doing it this way, I would have ended up with a ridiculously wavy, uneven, strip of fabric that would need to be cut again in order to even it out!

I wanted to use rotary cutters and an edger, in order to get some semblance of an even strip.  Since you're only cutting one layer of fabric, but a tube automatically gives you two layers, my solution was to insert a small cutting mat inside the tube.   This way, I could use the rotary cutter, and I just kept adjusting the tube of fabric by setting the cut strip to the side, and rotating the tube to the top of the cutting mat, evening up the cut edge, placing a clear straight edge over the fabric, and cutting the next bit.   Hope that makes sense.

Here's where I'm at with the Piping Process, so far:

The 2 left samples are the seams between the pigskin & the silk/cotton.  On the left is a sample with unfilled bias strip.  The seam allowance is pressed to one side (the silk/cotton side) & topstitched.

The center is filled piping (filled with a nylon cording...I need to get some proper cotton welt/filler cord - any suggestions about brands, suppliers [JoAnn's, which is close to me...?], etc?)

What I know I'll do with these is:

• Remove the interfacing from the SA on the pigskin.
• Press the SA to the silk/cotton side.
• Grade the SA

What I think I want to do is get some proper filler for the piping & use the filled piping option, even though it makes for a bulkier seam, but I'm open to suggestions/opinions from any of y'all....?


The right side sample shows filled piping on the edge of the pigskin.  I understitched this, & graded the SA.  I like this option for the front edges & neckline; don't know yet if I'll carry this through to the bottom hem.  I could topstitch this edge as well, but I think I'll wait to decide on that.

I'm definitely committed to this relationship; I still think it has great possibilities, and I'm determined to do all I can to not muck it up!   So far, my date is being very cooperative; that's always a good sign!  :)

Any relationship advice is welcome......

Oh, btw, here is a link to some inspiration pieces from Diane's website - enjoy!