One of my last projects of 2017 was this toddler quilted vest I made for my daughter. If it looks like a twin of sorts to my quilted coat, you’d be right! I had just enough of the leftover ombre fabric to make her this little quilted vest.
Toddler Quilted vest
Ottobre 4-2017-4
I started with this sweet little vest pattern from Ottobre. It’s meant for a sweatshirt knit, but it’s a boxy enough of a fit that adding the extra layers in batting and lining did not seem unwise. I traced off an 86 which is a little big at the moment for my daughter, especially in the hood. I tell you, Finnish children are apparently tall according to Ottobre. With my son’s jacket, I noticed the same thing. I will shorten the hoods in the future for my kids.
Lining
The lining is a Michael Miller cotton from some of Betsy Siber’s prints. This is the snowy egrets print. A while back I had applied through Sewing Portfolios to become a video creator for Michael Miller. I got turned down, but Michael Miller was still really kind in sending me like 5 yards of fabric.
Armhole binding
The armholes are meant to be finished with ribbing, but I used bias tape since I was already using woven fabrics.
Hood finishing
The only trick about adapting this pattern for a quilted vest came in the hood. The hood is meant to be lined and sewn together right sides together and turned through the neck seam before sewing it to the vest. Since I quilted it, the raw edges of the hood had to be finished another way. I used more bias tape I cut from the quilting cotton. There was 1 yard of the snowy egret fabric to work with, and I used all but a tiny triangle. Finishing all of the insides with bias tape and trimming the hem and hood took a lot of bias for a tiny little project!
Quilting process
I took videos of the quilting process for this particular jacket. The first 2 are below, and there will be 4 more. Though I’m using this pattern, I give some different choices for women’s vest and jacket patterns in the first video that you could use. The quilting process is going to be the same even if the construction is a little different for each different pattern.
Watch the video tutorial for how to make a DIY quilted vest
Elizabeth Farr is the writer behind the Elizabeth Made This blog where she shares helpful sewing tips, step by step sewing tutorials and videos to help you explore your creativity through sewing. She has written sewing Eguides and patterns, been a featured teacher at Rebecca Page’s Sewing Summit and Jennifer Maker’s Holiday Maker Fest and her work has appeared in Seamwork and Altered Couture magazines. She also created a line of refashioned garments for SEWN Denver. When her sewing machine isn’t humming, she’s playing and teaching violin, and hanging around a good strategic board game with her husband and 4 kids.
Very nice vest your darling girl looks adorable in it. I always like projects I can use up all the bits. Great tutorials as well. good idea to mention that it would be the same way of doing it wether an adult size or lil one. Sometimes we loose that knowledge when in the middle of a project
Plus I know I work better with visual vs printed word. Thank you for taking the time to make the videos. It is a big help to visual Lerner’s .
Thank you Becca, and you’re so welcome! So much of what we do in sewing is indeed visual, and there’s a lot of micro steps that you don’t necessarily think about in the heat of the moment that not only show up in video but are kind of critical for the final product! Thanks for watching–there’s more coming. 🙂
It’s absolutely adorable!
Thanks Faye! She’s always wary of outerwear, but she loves the birds!
She is so sweet! Fun project!
Thanks Georgia! I need to make more patterns from this issue! There’s so many good patterns!