Patch Vest: Red Edition

Last October, I made a vest from a whole bunch of 2" squares of Halloween print fabric sewn together.  I really like how it turned out, and, while I do enjoy the idea of Halloween all year, I'm ambivalent about orange outside the Halloween Season Proper.

So, I had a vague plan to make another 2" square patchwork vest, and earlier this year I was struck by some red and pink fabrics in my small yardage stash.  I gathered similar and coordinated fabrics, then acknowledged, and proceeded to ignore, the distinct Valentine's Day feeling of everything together.

Last weekend I started cutting the squares.  It helped a lot to reference the finished Halloween vest, so I could count how many patches were needed.  I still managed to cut too many, which is always better than not enough, of course.  I used the Halloween vest as a guide for what patches should go where to make panels big enough for the pattern pieces, and I also learned from the Halloween vest to pay attention to the front opening overlap on the other side, to avoid the same print ending up near itself (it's the second row from the edge on the lower side that the opening edge on the upper side lands next to.)

I started sewing squares together in the evening, then finished the next day

 

 Then I procrastinated and dawdled for most of the rest of the week and finally finished today.

I'm not sure if there's anything to say about this project that I didn't say in the Halloween version.

The only thing I can think of that's drastically different is that I must have used smaller seam allowances for the patches in this one, because things ended up in slightly different locations relative to the pattern pieces.  It's not a problem, just an observation.

This really is an easy pattern to cut and sew (especially since I leave out the fiddliness of inserting back ties into the back darts), and I plan to make it again from a solid piece of fabric, and I'm hoping the assembly of the vest doesn't seem so tedious when I don't have the fun of the patchwork to compare it to.

I don't finish the lining side seams the way the pattern wants, but, as usual, absolutely no-one is going to see the weirdness that abounds, so it's fine.