Rolled a 4: Patch Vest! (at this point I want to mention, with great amusement, that I didn't have to re-roll any of these.)
Patch here means patchwork, just like the previous project, and vest is view B of New Look 6514.
The vest pattern is completely straightforward and reminds me that I do want to make more vests
just
without cutting a lot of 2" squares from scrap fabric and taking over a day to assemble them into panels just a bit bigger than the pattern pieces first.
Once that was done, though, zip zoom and the vest was finished
I'm not sure if I'll make "Halloween Patchwork Project" an actual tradition, but this is the third year in a row I've made one, starting with a bomber jacket and then a jumper. This one differs from the previous two by being entirely Halloween prints, by being made from genuine scraps from other projects (including the previous two Halloween Patchwork Projects), and by cutting the squares considerably smaller.
Since I was starting with scraps, I took everything large enough from my Halloween cotton scraps bag and figured I'd use all of it, but I quickly realized I wanted to stick with bold, bright colors, so I put all of the muted and antique prints back.
I eventually got into my larger scraps, stored with the small yardage, but all of it is indeed scraps, no untouched quarter yards or fat quarters involved.
I feel like I didn't spend as much time re-arranging the layout on this as I did on the previous two projects--my main goal was that prints on either side of a seam wouldn't be repeated. In some areas, that meant picking out stitches and replacing a patch here and there...which would have been easier had I not sewn everything with a very small stitch, but that was necessary so the stitches wouldn't fall apart when they were cut to the pattern shapes.
And then I got to the point of preparing to add the buttonholes (four larger buttons instead of the five smaller the pattern wants) and saw that repeat, where the right side overlaps the left and the orange bat print lands next to itself. Since the entire vest construction was finished at that point, I did not want to pick things apart to replace one of them, so there they are. I am seriously considering doing something to alter the left-side bat print--haven't decided what, but...something.
I did not spend any time trying to get points to align. Nobody's gonna get close enough to see, and the colors are so bright they'd get distracted anyway.
Using the magnetic seam guide helped me stitch the lower curves evenly, and I also notched aggressively.
And every inner curve got clipped aggressively.
Between the clipping and notching and how readily both the cottons and the lining responded to pressing (with appropriate temperature adjustments), the curves turned out pretty well.
And, look: I didn't top stitch! Anything! Me!
You can see at the very top of this side that I applied a solid strip of fabric to make up the needed length, instead of using another row of patchwork. I did that on both sides, but the way things ended up, it's not as obvious over there. It's fine. I have long hair.
The lining is one of the fabrics I got at the craft re-use thrift store in July.
I did the construction that leaves the side seams open, pulls one set of side seams through to together side, sews them together as a tube, returns them to their proper place, wrestles the other side seams around to sew as much as possible, then sews the remaining opening closed. I did machine stitching, so it's not pretty. But. Compared to all the other stitching in this project, it was fast, and that's what mattered.
I omitted the back tie, which would have been set into the back darts. I cut everything at size 14, so there's really no slack in the waist area to be taken up by a tie.
There are so many bits of thread stuck all over this--no matter how many I pick off, I still find more. There were so many threads and snips of fabric all over the room--and tracked out into the hall--that I ran the vacuum immediately after finishing this project. I'm not sure if I've ever vacuumed so late in the evening before.
I knew parts of one of the prints had glow-in-the-dark ink, so I grabbed a small UV light to charge it and discovered that many of these prints are black light reactive to varying degrees.
This might prompt me to make a solid color button up shirt, eventually. There's one more die roll project left before I think more about it.
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