Somehow, I failed to write a post about this vest, which I made in 2023. That might be because, although I love the concept, I haven´t really figured out how to wear it.
Photo of an open green linen vest with large,
light-green, pockets. The vest is shown over a
yellow nylon quilted jacket. (It doesn´t hang
well on the wire dressmaker´s dummy otherwise!)
It´s the Forager Vest, from Sew Liberated patterns. It´s a simple open vest with enormous patch pockets on the front, wrapping slightly to the back.
I´m not sure what the issue is. Maybe it´s just a bit too Little Orphan Annie? Maybe I need to be a taller/larger person in order to not get lost in it?
Photo of a woman in an ivory short linen dress with
a light gray long vest over. The pockets on the vest
are enormous, and the woman is wearing
knee-high tooled leather boots. Photo from
https://sewliberated.com/
The pockets are glorious, but, when the pockets are deployed, the vest becomes almost unwieldy, which makes it less practical than maybe it should be.
It´s a bit more ´much´ than I had anticipated, and has not (yet?) found a place in my wardrobe. I do seem to have a tendency to forget that I gravitate to more tailored clothes — but I always long for the right vest!
My pockets are made from printed linen napkins, bought from Target years ago. Because they are so huge, I added smaller ones inside the large ones.
Photo of a light green pocket made of linen, with a lacey
brown print of leaves superimposed on the fabric.
The pocket is pinned to the main vest fabric.
That makes for better weight distribution, and also makes it less likely that smaller things will get tossed out of the lovely external pocket bags.
The vest itself is made from a Target tablecloth, also years old, and purchased for yardage, not the table. I´m not in Target much these days, but, at one time, they weren´t a bad source for fabric, at all — if you checked the housewares department!
I finished the armholes and edges with commercial bias tape, since I am always annoyed when instructed to cut a wide bias strip, without a pattern piece, in a commercial pattern — and I really didn´t want to spend the extra yardage on an annoying wide bias facing. (Personal peeve — your mileage may vary!)
Photo of the back of a green linen vest, showing a pleat
at the yoke, and a hanging hook of light-green linen.
The edges of over-sized, light-green, pockets can
be seen to the right and left of the vest at the hem.
Long sleeves belonging to a yellow nylon parka show
to the left and right of the vest.
There´s a pleat in the back, and I added a loop so that the vest could be hung up, since, around chez Noile, we seem to be fond of leaving our vests on hooks
Pattern instructions are very sparse, and completely without illustrations. It´s a simple garment, so maybe that´s not terribly important, but people who aren´t text-oriented might find the construction a little too laborious without some kind of visual aid.