mutteringhousewife

Some years ago I was out shopping with my sister and we noticed that many shops were stocking furry waistcoats. I love a waistcoat and love a bit of tactile stimulation, so tried some on. One I particularly liked had a price tag of $150. “One hundred and fifty smackers!” I cried. “For that I’d make my own!”. And with the sunny reliance on my competence that characterises my family, my sister replied “As if you would”.

I’ll show her, I thought. I got myself up to Spotlight and bought some of their finest fake fur, a waistcoat pattern and even some interfacing, just in case. And then I was rather inconveniently diagnosed with cancer and rather lost concentration for a bit. A couple of years later I started thinking about that waistcoat again. They still hadn’t gone out of fashion. I got out the pattern. I boggled quite a bit at the amount of tissue paper involved and all the numbers. I put it away again. Then last year, you may recall, I was coerced into making Roman Soldier costumes for the school play from a pattern and after the initial two weeks of migraines it really wasn’t too difficult. Today I found myself with a whole afternoon with no one in the house to demand stuff of me. It was time.

The pattern looked a lot less intimidating this time around. I got out the fur, dug out some left over satiny material from making the Muffet’s swimming carnival cape, laid it all out and started cutting. Of course a project of this type needs some helpers to stop the material from flying away.

The fur proved surprisingly easy to sew. I’d pinned and sewed together the eight pieces in less time than it took to cut them out. Of course unpicking the back two sections to sew them on the right way up took a bit of time, but we got there in the end. I could actually wear it just like this.

But I’m going to do it properly with lining, here it is in pieces:

I’ve put that together too. You then put the shiny side of the lining to the furry side of the waistcoat and pin it together. I’ve just started sewing that up and after bamboozling myself over whether I’m going to be able to turn it the right way out or not I’ve decided to finish it in the morning. And then I shall go over to my sister’s place and swan around in my furry waistcoat and she will no doubt ask me whether I shouldn’t have just plonked down the bucks and I could have had it five years ago. But that, of course, would be missing the point entirely.