First, this shirt and vest were made from the By Popular Demand pattern, using the jacket pattern pieces.
For the shirt, I obviously omitted the jacket's pockets. I also lengthened the pattern by about 3" so that the orange shirt would show not only at the sleeves but also at the hem.
For the vest, I left the pockets off again. I shortened the collar by 3/8" so that a rim of orange would show above the blue vest collar when the outfit was worn. Of course, I left off the sleeves, which meant that I needed armhole facings. Below, I'll show you how I came up with those.
Finally, I used 2 threads through the needle to make really prominent orange edgestitching and topstitching on the vest to further tie the outfit together. I wrote an explanation of that stitching technique in the third blog published in June 2019. You can find it by clicking on June on the right hand side of the page.
Drafting an armhole facing pattern piece is pretty simple. Begin by pressing the Front, Yoke, and Back pattern pieces for the jacket. Use a dry iron on a low temperature. That gets the pattern pieces to lie flat and ensures that your work will be accurate. Then overlap the pieces at the shoulder and at the back/vest seam by 1-1/4" (2 seam allowances). (Ignore the other alterations I've done on these pattern pieces.)
Lay a piece of tracing paper (I use medical exam paper--it's cheap and works fine) over the armhole area of the overlapped pieces.
Using a fashion ruler, trace the armhole edge of the overlapped pattern pieces. Also, mark the front armhole clip. Be sure to also trace the top of the side seam edges.
Move the tracing paper away from the pattern. Decide how wide you want your armhole facing to be, then add 5/8" for seam allowances. In this example, I used a total width of 2-5/8", which will result in 2" wide facings.
Use a seam gauge to mark the width of your new armhole facing. In the illustration below, note how I have positioned the seam gauge so that both sides of the little blue tab (slide) are lying on the traced line. Making the seam gauge extend straight out from the original traced line ensures that the facing will be the same width everywhere. Make marks as you move the seam gauge along the facing.
Using a fashion ruler, connect the marks in a smoothly curved line.
Be sure to mark the front and back of your new facing pattern. (Now you can see that front clip. I had to reposition the facing on the Front to mark it. You can do it in the first step above, when I mentioned it!)
You can adapt many shirt and jacket patterns to make vests using this technique. Have a good time!
