FO: Faux Fur Bell Town Vest

This fabric was part of the little haul that I bought at Trumpington Hall in early December. I had about 90cm of about 150cm width and I knew that I was going to make a vest/gilet type top out of it. I had planned to make a pattern from a vest top/gilet that I currently own, but I was reading the December Indie Pattern Review that Fiona from Diary of a Chain Stitcher puts together every month and there she mentioned a free vest top pattern from Straight Stitch Designs, the Bell Town Vest. I had a quick look and immediately downloaded and printed it out.

I followed various pieces of advice that I had read on the Internet about cutting faux fur from the reverse of the fabric to avoid spoiling the pile/fur and limiting a fluff explosion. I used my favourite way of way of marking fabric - using  sliver of soap instead of chalk. I can rarely get chalk to work consistently and saw this as a tip somewhere on Instagram and it is great!

 There is a slight stripe in the fur so I had to be careful to match that up

The vest is lined and I used a lot of pins to keep the slippery lining and the shifty fur together.

pocket sewn into wrong seam... how did I not notice!

The pattern doesn't include pockets, but I wanted them in mine. I used the same pattern piece for the in seam pockets in my Minoru jacket and estimated where I wanted to put them.  Unfortunately I sewed them beautifully to the lining of the jacket and somehow only realised this after I had sewn up the side seams of the faux fur.  I spent a long time unpicking.... perfectly matching thread that sinks into the fabric is great until you need to remove it!

I managed to get the pockets in the right place with out unpicking the whole seam, but the pocket openings are a fraction smaller that they should be.

So here is my little ensemble on Lola.

I had planned to get the tops, skirt and gilet sewn ready for Christmas day, but I got some kind of lurgy and spent most of the week before Christmas in bed. However, a very good friend turned 50 recently and so I figured that I could wear the ensemble for her celebrations: