Tag Archives: Fishing Vests

July 15, 2012 · 9:39 am

Second verse, same as the first!

A little bit louder and a little bit worse!

I’m about 95% sure I’ve used that as a post title before.

Yet it works, so very, very well.

Tyo’s fishing vest is finished. I was able to avoid some of my mistakes from the first time around, and instead make a whole new crop. I’d say overall, I did not improve significantly. Although I think all the practice with cargo pockets has helped some in that department. And some of the mistakes were the ones I have to make in order to learn why X shortcut was a bad idea. Yes, I tend to have to learn things the hard way. Especially with sewing.

Whaddaya lookin’ at?

The details are all the same as this post, the only difference being I had snaps and D-rings this time, so there are two snaps and a D-ring at the nape of the neck, which is apparently a handy place to hang your little fishing net from. To fit Syo I graded the basic vest pieces up, increasing width by about 4 cm around and length by about 1 cm. I interfaced all the vest body, instead of just the back yoke, this time, which will hopefully add to the vest’s sturdiness (it’s a very lightweight denim), but necessitated some extra pocket linings that I forgot to incorporate properly and had to engineer into place rather late in the construction process. Oops.

Back view

Here’s the only shot you can see the D-ring at the back of the neck.

My girl.

Here’s some random poses.

This one was supposed to show the pockets better.

I’m really far too bored by this whole project to go into the annoying details. If you have something specific you’re dying to know, feel free to ask in the comments and I promise I’ll answer.

And now, on to bigger, better things! (and a fly fishing rod case. Ulp.)

Advertisement

11 Comments

Filed under Sewing

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 13, 2012 · 10:19 pm

Not dead

… just busy.

There hasn’t been much sewing.

20120713-220531.jpg

What’s up.

What has been done has been of the lather, rinse, repeat variety, which is interesting only in which new mistakes I’ll manage to make this time. I’m making Tyo’s fishing vest, now that Syo’s has been tested and found adequate (aside from the lack of D-rings, which I will be remedying shortly.)

On the plus side, my father-in-law gave me these cute little black thread snippers. They’re quite nifty. He got them from the fly fishing store, but I’ve seen similar designs sold for sewing, as well.

Also, Tyo found my good fabric scissors! They’re the same ones Gertie uses (I had mine first, or at least had them before she blogged hers) and my god are they awesome. Like, panty-wetting awesome. Ahem. Apparently they were on the basement floor underneath the giant neon-green stuffed turtle. They have been missing since sometime last winter, so finding them is a major relief. Darned turtle.

I’m hoping I can power through the rest of the vest this weekend, although what I’ll do after that remains mysterious. Too many ideas, not enough any time. I foresee lots of fantasy sewing posts in my future. If I can even find the time to write them.

On the subject of fishing (which I know you all find riveting), last weekend we attended the grand opening of the “Kids Can Fish Trout Pond” at our local fish hatchery (what, you don’t have a local fish hatchery?) and, among other fun activities, the kids got to tie their very own fishing flies, courtesy of volunteers from the local Hook & Hackle club.

Fly tying

This was an excercise to delight any crafter’s heart—yarn, feathers, beads, wire, string, glue… it was all I could do not to run screaming*.

More fly tying.

Naturally, Osiris thinks it’s the best thing ever. I think the only thing keeping him from sinking several hundred dollars into clamps, feathers, and wire (I already have a selection of beads and yarn) is the fact that we don’t have anything like several hundred dollars to sink into anything right now. And he’d rather be fishing. But come winter, watch out…

It doesn’t help that the lady helping Syo told her she was a “natural.”

*I have more than enough hobbies, thank you. I feel much the same way about scrapbooking.

14 Comments

Filed under Sewing

Tagged as , ,

June 24, 2012 · 9:31 pm

Inordinately Pleased With Myself

Smug.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Which I suppose is why I take on these ridiculous, intricate projects. Especially at times when I’ve been claiming I need all my sewing to be brainless and easy because my brains are occupied elsewhere.

The Fishing Vest is finished. (For those of you paying attention, the missing front lining piece showed up on the cutting table, underneath about three layers of other crap that I swear I went through twice before)

Back & Front

So, as fishing vests go, this one is fairly simple, meaning there’s only eleven pockets instead of umpteen bajillion. And I forgot to pick up D-rings, so there’s no little D-ring doodads, and there’s only one snap tab because apparently I only had one heavy-duty snap left (well, I had 3/4 of the second one, but that last 1/4 is kind of critical. Osiris had asked that the back pocket be deep enough to hold a water-bottle, and I think it probably isn’t. I interfaced the upper back yoke for a bit of extra strength, and possibly I should’ve interfaced the front of the vest as well, but oh, well.

Bias tape “maker” (actually folder)

I waffled back and forth about how I was going to finish the vest, but in the end went for a bound finish, which is common (yes, I’ve spent a depressing amount of time in the last several weeks looking at pictures of fishing vests online) but not universal. I tried to convince myself this was a perfect opportunity to use pre-made bias binding, but couldn’t quite make myself go there. What is it about pre-made bias binding? I have a shitload of the stuff, and every time I go to use it I talk myself out of it. So I made my first denim bias-binding. Fortunately, it’s a pretty darn light-weight twill. I used my jumbo bias-tape maker, possibly for the first time, and it went better than expected, especially considering I totally eyeballed the width of the tape when I was cutting it out. The application went relatively well, as well, despite not always remembering which side I should start on. And after stitching on four cargo pockets (albeit teeny ones) I feel much more comfortable with them than I did last time. The exposed zippers are still a little rough, especially the ones on the pockets.

Details (view at own risk as there’s at least five screw-ups visible in these photos alone…)

Actually, the whole project went better than expected. There were a few inevitable snafus, like forgetting to sew the velcro tabs on the upper pair of pockets before attaching them (actually the hand-sewn finish looks much better, if only because I use black thread to match the velcro that time) and forgetting to make the two zippered cargo pockets on the front mirror images of each other, and there are minor imperfections at every single point along the way, but I’m not going to dwell on them too much because, y’know what, it’s DONE! And, what’s most important, it’ll work. And it’s pretty cute from even a foot away

Oh, and the playing with the grain of the stripey almost-camo-print on the pockets was intentional. I’m kinda proud of that.

Comparing fit

It fits Tyo snugly and Syo more loosely (I did mention their shoulders are almost identical…), so I think the next one should be a little larger. It won’t be hard to grade the vest up a bit (and maybe do a teeny FBA  with the dart incorporated in that horizontal seam above the zipper), and I think I’ll just use the same pockets.

But not yet—I’m going to wait until they have a chance to road-test this one.

29 Comments

Filed under Sewing

Tagged as , , , ,

June 21, 2012 · 8:17 pm

A pain worth sharing.

I know most of you care about as much about the intricacies of making fishing vests as you do about, oh, sewage treatment plant design.  Nonetheless, if I’m stuck with it, I’m bloody well going to share.

Cargo pockets and back piece

 

I made some pretty good progress a couple of nights ago when Osiris’s best bud called him out for an airport-layover hangout, but then stalled out over lack of zippers. The vest requires five zippers. Fortunately (?) for me, Fabricland had their Canada Day sale early this year, so today I headed out there with a friend.

I got zippers.

I also made the mistake of looking in the clearance section. Which was fifty percent off.

Stuff that’s just kinda cute at $3, becomes really irresistible at $1.50/m.

Fabrics!

And then the awesome cutting-table lady kept getting to almost the end of the bolt and going “Ah, that looks like two metres to me…” when it was really, ah, well, let’s just say the cuts were generous. Er, so the spiderman print I got at Value Village a wee bit back, but I figure it was worth sharing (and it’s actual fabric, not an old bedsheet!). It probably cost more than any of the other fabrics, which are all fairly thin but really nice-feeling knits. And, polkadots!

Pink & green camo lycra

Oh, yeah, I forgot to photograph this one because the children had absconded with it. This was also like $1.50/m, and it was worth it just for the squeals when they saw it. Few things make my kids happier than slightly-girly camo. It’s lycra. Not good quality lycra, either, but thin, run-prone, easily snagging lycra. Ah well, they’ll be over the moon for the five seconds that it lasts…

New Look 6789

My friend bought a couple of metres of the black polkadot, too, and we spent a little while this evening altering the the pattern for New Look 6789, which will be her first “real” attempt at sewing a dress. She’s one of those short, round shapes that can never, ever find anything to fit off the rack, so I really have hopes of getting her hooked. Assuming I can figure out how to fit a body that’s about as different from mine as possible while still being the same species. We did some tissue fitting, and I made my first ever attempt at an FBA.  We won’t be able to try actually sewing for a few more days, though—but here’s hoping it works! (And since the fabric was a whole $2/m, no, we’re not making a toile. And no, the pattern’s not for a knit, but it’s a pretty stable, not-very-stretchy knit and I think as long as we interface the upper band and shoulder-straps it’ll be fine.)

I really like this pattern. I’m kind of jealous she’s going to get one before I get a chance to sew it up…

19 Comments

Filed under Sewing

Tagged as , , , ,

June 18, 2012 · 8:21 am

And now for something completely different.

The pattern.

I am a busy woman. I have made promises.

Commitments.

And I have been reminded of them.

Vests kinda like this.

Namely, I said (oh, back in April) that I’d make my kids fishing vests.

Yes, fishing vests. Those things with all the zillion cargo pockets. No, I wasn’t thinking it through. On the other hand, the kids’ ones are insanely expensive.

Vest pattern

So last night, rather than working on yet another dress, I hunted through the box of kids’ patterns and eventually settled on the vest from this one. It’s a size 8, so technically it will either be big on Syo or small on Tyo. I’m vaguely hopeful it’ll fit both*. We’ll see.

The rough pattern

I traced out the pattern along the stitching lines (hooray for one-size patterns!) and started laying out my extras: zipper inserts, pockets, bits and bobs. Then I traced all the individual pieces separately, added seam-allowances, and tried not to flake out about which pieces I need to cut two, four, or eight times. Fabric of choice (at least for this version) is a lightweight not-actually-camo-print twill originally purchased to replace these capris of Tyo’s. Hopefully I’ll have enough for the vest and the capris, because heaven and earth will tremble if I don’t. Before I start assembly I need to pick up a few more zippers (my plan calls for five or six, depending on whether I can locate 6″ separating zippers) and maybe some other fun bits of hardware—a few D-rings, at any rate. I have also written myself out a construction order, otherwise I’ll never remember things like adding velcro to the pocket flaps.

The drafting actually went pretty quickly. We’ll see how I do with the actual construction.

*I should point out here than until Tyo’s recent, um, developments, she and Syo had almost the same ribcage measurement. Tyo is three years older and plenty taller, but she takes after the pear-shapes in her father’s family, with a narrow ribcage. Syo, on the other hand, is leaning towards my kind of broad-shouldered shape.

11 Comments

Filed under Sewing

Tagged as , ,