Waiting For Spring - Introduction

No, I'm not joking, it's the title of my new project.

Another project?!? Are you nuts? I'm not even going to answer that. You should know the answer.

It's a vest. Vests are not normally my thing, but it was part of a challenge for an upcoming show. I figured "Why not?". It's something I normally don't do, and it will be challenge to make it fit my style. It's not actually made from a vintage pattern, but was inspired by one:


McCall's 5187 View E (the one in the bottom left corner) is a close cousin to View 2 above from a pattern from 1970 or so, the brocade version with the white fur trim (again, in the bottom left corner).

For my version, I've eliminated the trim, but kept the border bands. I was going to do fur, but ended up deciding to make it reversible, so no faux fur for this garment. Here it is, doesn't it look fabulous over the Diamonds gown? (Just joking, I was too lazy to take the gown off the dressform one more time.)

I need to get you up to speed on where I'm at with this project - there's a lot happening all at once here, so I'll try to take things one at a time.

First, this is the green side. The other side will be pink. Both sides are silk dupioni from the Silk Baron. I'm working on this side for the moment, but by the end of next week I hope to have the pink side, done, too. Each side will be quilted/embellished differently. The green side is more traditional, while the pink side will be a little more current. For the rest of this post, I'll be referring to the green side only.

Second, there are three types of quilting on this side. There is twin needle diamond quilting on a 1" grid for the most of the body. On the bands there is a wavy line of quilting, actually just one half of a rope, again done with a twin needle. In the center of the back, there is a panel of Celtic knot type of gridwork. (Thankfully, I learned how to draw all sorts of Celtic knots a few years ago, using the same techniques as the monks used to!) Here's a close up of the what I'm going to call the "trellis". It looks like a trellis to me. (Yes, I'll be removing the band and redoing it - it looks a bit wrinkly on the left where the band is attached. I have to remove it for other reasons anyway.)

How did I actually get all the lines straight? The diamond quilting was easy - I use a quilting bar on my machine, make sure it's on tight and stitch away. The trellis wasn't so easy. I drew the original on a piece of tissue paper, pinned it to the vest and stitched on the lines. Then I had to pick out all the little pieces of paper left behind. Not fun with the twin needle stitching, but wasn't bad for the result.

Third, body embellishment. I'll leave that for another post - if you look closely at the front picture, you'll see that one side has some embellishment started. Actually, now that I think about it, it will take quite a few posts to get caught up.

Parting shot: more snow! We only got 8 1/2" in this storm. This is nothing compared to some of you out in New York State! I have a friend that moved out there and she wonders why she ever left New England! (For those of you not in the US, that's a 45cm ruler, so we got 21cm of new snow.)

I'm letting Diamonds just hang out for the moment. Sometimes it helps to let it rest for a few days and then look at it with fresh eyes. I cut out a muslin for a new skirt today, but spent most of the day doing samples for the embellishment for the vest. Tomorrow I'll be back in the studio, but if it's nice out, you might find me sledding with the kids.