“Thanks to the girls in his life, this dash­ing young man looked sharp for his 8^th grade graduation!”

I love menswear! When I was approached to make my brother’s grad­u­a­tion vest, I was more than hap­py to accept the ‘order!’ My broth­er is pret­ty thick for his age so it’s hard enough for him to find clothes that fit, let alone clothes that fit & are fash­ion­able. For­tu­nate­ly, he has a sis­ter who can help him out!

I used Kwik Sew’s Vest Pat­tern K2860. (I’m lucky that he’s still small enough for me to use com­mer­cial pat­terns for him. The oth­er boys in my fam­i­ly are too big for com­mer­cial pat­terns!) This pat­tern was true to size and I was very hap­py with the results.

I used metal­lic poly­ester fab­ric and gray taffe­ta for the vest. I HATED work­ing with this fab­ric! I’m not a fan of using woven polyester.

But he was going to wear this vest once (maybe twice), so we chose inex­pen­sive fab­ric. Both the gray and pink pais­ley fab­rics unrav­eled and stretched eas­i­ly. This fab­ric was dif­fi­cult & frus­trat­ing to press and sew welt pockets.

I recent­ly received a stash of but­tons from a friend. The but­ton stash has some real­ly cool but­tons for men’s jack­ets; crowns, eagles, lib­er­ty bells, lions, etc. My broth­er is extreme­ly patri­ot­ic and loves civ­il war & com­bat stories/movies, so he ulti­mate­ly chose the lib­er­ty bell but­tons for his vest (and jack­et).