Snow's Vest (Patreon)

Hello! So... I realize it's um... a few hours before the end of the month. I'm so sorry for the radio silence most of the month. I found out earlier this month I might have cancer and waiting for all the testing and scans and screenings and bla bla bla that I have scheduled has been... difficult. I've been struggling with my mental health A LOT through it all. Needless to say, i haven't been handling it too well and part of that has translated into not being very active online. I should have had this breakdown for you guys weeks ago and I'm so sorry it took me this long. Thank you guys SO much for your continued support through my inactivity.

SO. The vest. I actually had a but of an upper hand starting out. I already had a bodice pattern pretty much perfectly tailored to fit me while wearing a binder from my Prince Peach cosplay (Which is still a thing! I'm actually visiting Virginia for a week at the end of September to hopefully finish Peach and Daisy with Tori). I had to alter the length, move some seems around, and change the neckline, but it has definitely a huge help to have a pattern to use as a jumping point.

One of the biggest challenges of this project was pressing the seams of the velvet. If you've ever worked with velvet before, you'll know that you can't just iron velvet because it will crush the pile. They make EXTREMELY expensive needle boards that are used to iron velvet without crushing the pile but they are like $1000 and hard to find. Instead, you can use one of those fur/pet grooming brushes with all the little metal needles as a tiny tiny baby needle board. You lay the seam over the brush pile side down, stream the seam without pressing down with the iron, and the carefully use your finger to press the seam. This took.... and extremely long time.

The second most difficult part of this project was working with the silk satin I used for a lining. It is EXTREMELY shifty and it was very difficult to trace onto, cut. And sew.

The sleeves were pretty simple rectangles I modified to have a bit of a curve to the inside. To add the feathers to the bottom, I seam ripped some of the bottom, slid the bottom of the feathers up in, slipped in a strip of stitch witchers, carefully used steam and my fingers to press the seam back together to hold the feathers in place, then ran the edge through the sewing machine about an 8th of an inch away from the edge. I added some Swarovski crystals which helped hide the little stitch. The feathers themselves I dyed using sharpies and acetone. I painted the tips with liquid gold leaf.

Finally, to attach the sleeves to the vest, I sewed the outer layer of the vest to the outer layer if the sleeve then hand stitched the linings together.

I have a little left to do to the leggings, shoes, and harp, but I should have a post about those for yall very shortly!

As always, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments!