Jalie 2319 - This Is Not My Vest

That’s right, I’m wearing someone else’s clothes. It’s made by me, of an unlined Malden Mills fleeced back sweater knit.

OK, it’s not really all that exciting, it’s for my husband to wear at work this winter. He broke the zipper on the one I made for him two years ago and put in his order for a repair or replacement.

Here’s the original. I’m warning you it’s an ugly truth: the man wears his vest when he’s gluing, silk-screening, painting, sanding, finishing and wood machining. I’m pretty pleased with how well the fabric performed under all that hard work.

He likes having no extra bulk but a warm body so we left off the sleeves. This wasn’t news: I had made a vest in 2004 using the same fabric in a heather green and reviewed it at Pattern Review.

The old cambric blue color was a much better match to the sawdust than this new black will be. I predict a disaster but all the blue stash has been pressed into service as floating row covers for this winter’s garden. He should have placed his order earlier, right? But he looks good in black.

We added more taper to the hip than his first vest, and cut 1.25″ off the width of the shoulders, tapering around the armscye to .625″ under the arm. I had raised the underarm point but ended up cutting that off after fitting. He loves his new vest.

A bit of construction details:

The zipper is stitched in at .25″ from the teeth, turned and then stitched at the edge of the tape to hold it down. The added lower band was stitched on, hand tacked and then rather than turn under the lower raw edge I used 2 rows of triple stitch coverstitch to seal the raw edge and hold everything in place. Inside stitching

Outside stitching

This added on band is neat. We shortened it this year to tighten it up around the hip and eased in the back. I added .5″ to the depth of the band but I need to add maybe another .5″ to the depth of it (depending on the length of the zipper to be used) so I wouldn’t have to slightly stretch the front body. But I got the job done and the collar meets up rather nicely, if I may say so myself.

(Photo settings lightened for detail)

I serged the side seams and shoulder seams and zigzagged them down toward the back. I used the serger to cut off the excess fabric and finish the raw edge around the armscye

and used the triple coverstitch to tack all that down at about .625″ from the turned edge.

The collar on the first vest had a tendency to flip up so I cut the under collar .25″ smaller on the outside and front edges. With this thick fabric I could have taken even more off the edge.

Jalie 2319 is no longer offered on the Jalie website but I believe Pattern Review might still have some available

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