A Tale of Three Vests

 

Do you ever find yourself questioning your sanity? I recently had one of those moments.

For some inexplicable reason, I’ve been contemplating the best way to felt a garment. There are, as far as I know, three methods to try.

Method 1 involves felting the garment in one piece. This requires a careful layout to account for shrinkage in specific directions, and then felting the seams together at the end of the process.

Method 2 involves felting the various components—such as the back and fronts—before stitching them together.

Method 3 is creating yardage and then cutting out a pattern, stitching it just as you would for a non-felted garment.

I’ve tried Method 1 several times, but I never felt the fit was quite right. Unfortunately, I’m not tall and slender—in fact, quite the opposite. Achieving a good fit over my more generous curves is always a challenge, a battle of mind over matter.

On my first attempt, I calculated the shrinkage rate correctly, and the fit was perfect—except for the armholes, which stretched instead of shrinking, ending up near my waist. I didn’t realize that wool doesn’t always shrink predictably when it’s fulled, and I should have reinforced the armholes to prevent stretching. That attempt is now being slowly repurposed for other projects.

For my second try, I did a rectangular layout with silk on both sides. The armholes were cut after felting, so no stretching this time. I fulled it and fulled it and fulled it—60% shrinkage—and it was still too big. Eventually, I made a felted belt to cinch in the extra material at the back. While it looked lovely on the model, I wasn’t comfortable wearing it. Additionally wrangling a large, wet garment while still trying to keep the proportions correct requires muscle power and a large dollop of patience. That’s when I started thinking about Method 2.

This vest required a huge work area and a good deal of muscle to move it around while still trying to maintain the proportions.

With renewed enthusiasm, I dyed the wool, selected the silk I wanted to use, and cut out a pattern for the back and front. But Christmas was fast approaching, and instead of focusing on cooking, cleaning, and present wrapping, I found myself starting a vest project.

Midway through, I seriously questioned my sanity. It wasn’t even the need for warm clothes that prompted this—after all, I live in the subtropics, and the weather was in the mid-30s (Celsius). Yet there I was, making pavlova at midnight and sneaking around to wrap presents in the small hours before anyone else woke up, because I had been too busy making a vest!

Christmas intervened, but I finally finished the vest. And I must say:

1. It fits much better than my previous attempts.
2. It didn’t require the muscle work of wrestling a whole wet garment on my felting table.
3. Reinforcing the armholes and neck with string worked wonders—no stretching!
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Now, my New Year’s resolution is to try Method 3—using yardage—and, of course, not to start a major felting project before a significant family occasion!

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