Just Another Freddie Vest…

I’m back from a little sew-batical! Yeah… my sewing mojo has taken a bit of a beating recently. That combined with a hectic schedule at home + work meant I needed something lighthearted, fun and with fabric I could get excited about to entice me to get back together again with my Janome.

At our recent Melbourne Sewist’s Meetup, nearly everyone was talking about the Freddie Vest – a pattern with rather a bit of rock-star appeal, from a fellow Melburnian over at The Maker’s Journal. You’d expect that it would, considering it was named after Mr Mercury himself… It fit the bill to end my hiatus! I sewed most of this up during our Social Sewing outing (organised by Rachel from My Messings) where I was lucky enough to again spend the day sewing with a fabulously lovely group of ladies – I’m really looking forward to our next session!

I love the concept of mis-matching different weighted and patterned fabrics like this – the options are endless… But not really trusting myself to put together a winning combo and absolutely loving the version shown here, I took the shameless route of complete copy cat. And I’m liking the result a lot more than I thought I might.

I made the 14 (it comes in Australian Sizing), and used Liberty of London Fabrics for the front (Milliner Grey) and the lining (Axiom Black), some textured metallic-print fabric (Elephant’s Back, not available online) all from Tessuti, and some gunmetal-blue petersham ribbon (and elastic) I bought from Clegs. The other great thing is this pattern uses so little fabric!

I made a few changes, mainly shaving back the curved seam allowances at the back for a closer (non-poufy) fit against my body. Without knowing better, I would say the pattern accommodates up to a B cup – if you’re a fair bit bigger than this (like I am), then you’ll need to adjust the front pattern piece to avoid the it-must-have-shrunk-in-the-wash look. For me this meant I needed to move the elastic casing a bit further south, which didn’t surprise as the location for this is the same on the 8 as it is for the 14. Ah well.

What I do really love about this pattern is the finishing – it could even be reversible if you didn’t mind inverted darts/tucks on the front!

The instructions require some super fancy footwork between you and your Iron. I (metaphorically) have two left feet – ironing flat a 0.5mm seam allowance? Yeah… I prefer my fingers un-burnt and my fabric un-scorched, thank you. One lightbulb moment later and I was using my new-found miniature hemming technique to take care of those pesky 0.5mm seam allowances.

Rock on, people.