Vest With Pieced Handwovens

The vest I began here is now finished. I did the piecing on a piece of muslin cut 1" larger than the pattern all around. The piecing was relatively easy, as there are no side seams—the garment simply wraps around the body. The only seams are at the shoulder. After the piecing, I added a lining and some horizontal hand quilting to keep everything from sliding around. Then the whole thing went into the washer & dryer. Lots of shrinkage—note the extensive puckering on the lining. Then the final cut was made.

I like to use printed fabric as binding material on my pieced vests. I think it ties things together without drawing too much attention to itself. 

Then a button and buttonhole, and the requisite Bathroom Mirror Fashion Photo:

I really enjoyed working with this pattern. The only alteration I had to make was to run a line of machine stitching around the armhole edges and draw them up a bit to shrink them before putting the binding on, as they gaped otherwise. Here's the pattern info, if you'd like to try one for yourself.