Adding sleeves to a vest pattern to make a jacket

Crafting outside the lines

When you add sleeves to a vest you end up with a jacket. I made a vest without a pattern and was thrilled to end up with a wearable garment.

I am far from a standard size. I’ve never been a standard size, but these days I’m a plus sized non-standard size with narrow shoulders, large chest and belly, and a flattish bum (relatively speaking). Standard sizes have always assumed a hip-to-waist ratio that is far from representative of my own so things either hang like a sac from the hips down or they are flattering through the bum and way too small through the waist. Plus sized clothes for some reason assume that my shoulders grew along with the rest of me, but no. They did not. So a commercially made jacket will always be tight through the bust, too long in the sleeves, massive through the shoulders, and fit through the waistline.

In recent months I’ve gone back to sewing for myself. I’ve been reinvigourated by watching vloggers on YouTube (Bernadette Banner, Morgan Donner, Angela Clayton among them) who draft their own garment patterns, or drape them on a dress form. Many of these vloggers are making reproductions of historical clothes, working from pictures, paintings, and in some cases, patterns created from extant garments in museums.

If someone can look at a dress in a painting and come up with a real-live version of it, I can make a vest, right?