July 24, 2018

Thyme Vest with Project Run and Play Pattern Shop

I’m kicking off a span of no posts with a detail oriented project. I stitched up this Thyme Vest by Paisley Roots to help kick off the new pattern shop on the Project Run and Play website. This shop with feature patterns created by past and future designs of contestants. How cool is that?! Maybe one day I’ll have some patterns listed too, who knows? To open up the doors to this new project, past contestants have been featuring some of these patterns and designs. This week is outerwear week, which got me sewing up this awesome vest. All the outerwear patterns will be at a discounted rate of 20% off this week. Be sure to catch the sale now as I’ve been told sales won’t be happening often.

When Audrey emailed to ask if I would be interested in helping kick off the shop, I knew right away that I wanted to sew up the Thyme Vest. Karly of Paisly Roots was probably my first real sewing friend in the digital world and I wanted to support her work with this project. I love the support the sewing community shows, and Karly is definitely one of the people that has kept me going on this journey.

The Thyme Vest is an Anorak style vest for both boys and girls. It features two top pockets and two lower pockets on the front. (At least the actual pattern features these.) You may notice that my vest only has one top pocket. This is because I’m pocket OCD and I just couldn’t get those bottom curves to look identical. After several attempts, I kept my favorite version and tossed the others. I kept the two bottom pockets as they turned out quite nicely.

This was my first attempt at using Anorak snaps. Surprisingly, I only messed up two in the entire set. I didn’t even have to go back to the store for a new package. Woot. This vest pattern gives the option of the center snaps being exposed or hidden. I thought… if I’m going to take the time to do the real-deal-holy-field snaps… You’re going to see them. So, exposed snaps was the option I went with. I have to say… They look pretty darn good.

For fabric selection… Honestly I wanted to order some of the amazing pink tencel that Tami from Sew Sophie Lynn used on her Joy Jacket, but I procraftinated too long and didn’t get it ordered for this post. Maybe I’ll make another. I picked up this gray twill at my local JoAnns and used an amazing Art Gallery Rayon that was part of my Project Run and Play season winnings. I felt is was an appropriate choice considering the purpose of this project. I think the contrast in the lining really makes the piece pop. It was a success. (Though I really wanted to do something similar to Tami’s jacket. I’m still not over how awesome her jacket looks.)

To give you an idea of my jacket sewing experience, this is only my third-ish outerwear piece. With my very limited jacket sewing experience I was able to complete this vest with very little trouble. The only trouble I had was not being able to find a front facing piece. I later discovered I had accidentally trashed it in my pattern cutting cleanup. Oops. If you are interested in tackling an intermediate project, this is definitely something that you could put on your to-do list. Follow each step of the tutorial one at a time and you will have a beautiful piece to look at.