I asked Tom what he would like his waistcoat to look like. Cue usual answer, which is “I’m not sure, really!” So I suggested tweed because I had secretly wanted to make something with tweed for a while – see what I did there?! Anyway, after a search online we found In Tweed and sent off for some samples (which arrived really quickly). Tom chose this beautiful lightweight Teviot tweed. It took a while to find some satin for the back in just the right shade of grey to match, but after sending off for some samples from Platinum Bridal Fabrics, we decided that the Duchess satin in Majestic Gunmetal would be perfect to compliment the buttons and the tweed. The satin samples arrived so quickly too, so we were very impressed!

So today, I started making this tweed waistcoat – if you follow me on Instagram then you will have seen these work in progress photos already (sorry!) but I wanted to share them here for those of you who aren’t on Instagram. I used the same pattern that I used last time, which is Vogue Men V8048. It all came flooding back to me as I started to make it – as my friend said earlier, it’s just like riding a bike![/vc_column_text][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” images=”6339,6340,6341,6342,6343,6344,6345,6346,6347,6351″ img_size=”large” column_number=”2″ grayscale=”no”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1415565359563{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]I am particularly pleased with these buttonholes – those of you who have been reading my blog for a while will know that on my old machine I didn’t have the foot that I needed, so had to adjust the settings manually which was a nightmare! This was a breeze in comparison, and I feel a lot more confident about doing them on other things now.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”6353″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center” qode_css_animation=”” img_link_large=”yes”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1415565655897{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]Making this waistcoat seemed to go really quick – I was obviously in the sewing zone today – and also not doing any embroidery on it helped! I’m looking forward to Saturday when Tom can wear it, and I’ll try to get some good photos if he’ll let me…I keep forgetting that it gets dark so early now, which is nice for cosy crafting but not good for photo-taking.

I hope you have all had a fab weekend! What have you been making?[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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After months of planning and making, today I finally finished the waistcoats for our wedding! To be honest, there were many times when I didn’t think I’d get them done, and an equal number of times when I wondered why on earth I had decided to start in the first place…but today I’m so pleased that they have turned out better than I thought and that they all fit!

I must say a huge thank you to my Mum, Tom’s Mum and our lovely friend Hilary for all of their help – I really could not have done it without you! And also thank you to Tom, who has put up with me sewing at every spare minute since the start of the year, and also has been very supportive throughout (I’ve had many meltdowns over these waistcoats). He still wants to marry me, so that’s a good sign!

Super excited to see the men in them on the day! Less than 4 weeks to go now – yippee!

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Our wedding preparations are in full swing – only just over a month to go (which explains why I haven’t been able to blog as much recently!). I had set myself a deadline for finishing the six waistcoats by the end of June, which hasn’t quite happened but I suppose it is only the beginning of July! I have finished two of them though and I’m so happy with how they have turned out This one is Tom’s – he has an extra special one with snazzy buttons that I embroidered (I’ll do another post about the button-making when I’ve got a bit more time!). I’m really pleased with how they turned out, and the hearts, leaves and flower tie in nicely with the embroidery around the top.

I’ve also finished my Dad’s waistcoat – like the others, this has plain buttons made from the same fabric as the waistcoat fronts.

I’ve got one more waistcoat to put together and a few more bits to finish on the others, so I’m almost there! Yay!

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The pattern is a Vogue pattern (number V8048) which I bought in John Lewis, and you can make lots of different styles of waistcoat from it. Because there are six to make I wanted to keep it as simple as possible, so we’re making style C without the pockets. The material that I chose was also from John Lewis – the front is Macao in cream (£15 per metre) and the backing is Duchesse satin in champagne (£10 per metre).

So the first thing to do was to get our heads around the pattern, which was easier said than done! Thank goodness for highlighter pens, that’s all I can say!

Once we had done that, we cut out the relevant parts from the pattern. Because only two of the waistcoats are the same size, we traced the pattern for each size onto some dressmakers tracing paper, cut them out and then pinned them on to the fabric. The patterns were left on the fabric so that tailor’s tacks could be sewn on to mark the buttonholes and other pattern markings.

Just to check that we’d cut out the pieces properly, we tacked one together and asked Tom to model it!

By this point, it was quite late in the day and the light was fading. We also made the decision that I should do the embroidery before continuing to put it all together. We fused the interfacing onto the back of the front pieces so that I could embroider through both layers – I thought this would be tricky but it was surprisingly easy! So I travelled back home with my waistcoat pieces in hand, ready to get started.

In order to keep things as simple as posisble, I decided to just do a bit of embroidery from the top of the shoulders to the top of the first button. I designed a stem with leaves, making some of the leaves look like small hearts, but then decided to pin the ‘safe zone’ on the fabric and stitch it freehand.

Once the embroidery was finished, I could start putting the waistcoat together – mum came up this weekend and we made a start! I started by putting darts in the back panel and then moving on to the belt.

Can you tell what was wrong with the first belt?!

I have to say that the belt was a nightmare! It involved that crazy thing where you sew something fairly small inside out and then have to struggle to get it the right way around again without breaking it! Good job I had some knitting needles handy! Mum was really good at doing them – I get too cross doing anything like that! This is Mum helping out (she didn’t want to be in the picture!):

So here are a few pictures from the rest of the making process – I took loads so that I can remember what I’m doing when Mum isn’t here…

I didn’t quite get it sewn up before Mum and Dad had to go home, but Dad did try it on inside-out before he left!

I spent the rest of the afternoon sewing and managed to put it all together – hooray! After a lot of hard work (and a few times today when I thought about giving up) it was really good to see one almost done, and I’m really pleased with it. Hope the men like them! I need to press it a lot more (they’re quite poofy when they are turned the right way around) and do finishing up inside and put the buttons on, but that is for another day and another blog post!

A huge thank you to Mum, Helen and Hilary for all of your help so far, and also to Dad and Tom for letting me put your photos on my blog

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