Alyssa and I have a few completely indispensable assets at NFDC, and one of them is Tiffany, our #1 Minion. This is a guest post, since there is a lot to write about from Two Gents, and Tiff worked on the majority of the vests. Check out her new blog, Free Radish Designs, after you read her post here!
Hello SewSewDef readers! My name is Tiffany and I am lovingly known to the NFDC crowd as #1 Minion. I hang around, annoy them all, eat their food and do all sorts of wonderful things as needed. Most of the time my skills are put to props, costuming and stage management. For our last show, Two Gentlemen of Verona, I stuck mostly to sewing.
For the first time I was around to help and voice my opinion when it came to pattern picking and as Nikki, Alyssa and I lost our minds in the shiney new sewing room I got to take on a whole new challenge. Vests! Since this show was set in the Wild West, every man on stage would need a vest, which led to problems of its own: How to clothe 8 male characters in vests without making them all look the same?
Well that is where these two patterns came in; Butterick 3721 and Simplicity 2895. Between the three of us we decided on who was wearing what vest and in what fantastically flashy fabric. Once this was done, what we lovingly called the Vestival began.
Here’s the break down of the vests:
Antonio – S2895 view B
Duke of Milan – B3721 view B (double breasted)
Launce – S2895 view B
Proteus – B3721 view C
Thurio – S2895 view B (with contrast back)
Valentine – S2895 view A (with collar)
Eglamor – B3721 view C
Panthino – bought from Ebay
The patterns are very similar but did have distinguishing features. The Simplicity pattern calls for the same fabric all the way around, has a small collar option and has a pointed bottom. The Butterick has a double breasted/collared vest option, calls for contrasting back and is straight across the bottom.
The patterns both have a similar pocket method, however, the Butterick by far has a superior pocket to the Simplicity. I thankfully only had to pockets into two vests* and had to use both pattern methods. I started the pocket adventure of the Vestival with Launce’s vest as it was A.) made from fabric that was given to us and we had lots of it and B.) was Simplicity so how hard could it be? Well, sometimes Simplicity doesn’t earn its name.
It took me about ten minutes of staring at the directions before I decided it was only going to make senseif I did it. Thankfully that approach worked but even when I finished with the pattern directions I was still left with raw edges for the welt and no directions as to how to finish them. I in the end decided to tuck them and stitch them down.
The Butterick used almost the exact same method but gave directions for finishing all edges and made a deeper and sturdier pocket then the Simplicity. This was proven when I never once had to fix the pockets of Proteus’s vest (the one I used the Butterick for) but had to on multiple occasions had to fix Launce’s vest pockets. There is also the Actor Factor in that statement. I have a suspicion that Launce was being overly mean to his pockets by shoving his big hands in them without regard to the size of the pocket. It’s a mystery we shall never solve.
My recommendation, however, is that if you have to pocket a vest or a coat in this manner, pick up a copy of B3721. Just know that it’s currently residing in the Out-Of-Print section for Butterick and might not be there much longer. We were lucky enough to have the pattern in stock.
One step I was fortunate to get away with not doing for all these vests was making belts. The way all the vests ended up fitting made belts unnecessary. Thurio and Valentine’s vests got belts because those are the two Nikki did before having to move on to the gorgeous ladies outfits while I continued on with the Vestival alone but not without moral support and good music.
I’m sure you are wondering how all these vets turned out. Well take a look for yourself!
Vests! From left to right: Duke of Milan, Thurio, Antonio, Launce, Valentine, Proteus. Sadly Eglamour is not pictures as he was running late for photo call.
Backs of the Vests! For some reason the Simplicity called for a center back seam that took in to account a small bit of sway back in the seam. It was odd and didn’t really make any sense to me. The Butterick had you cut the back on the fold and it made no difference in the fit as far as i could tell.
The show was amazing and the vests were a hit on stage. They all turned out amazingly even if Thurio’s had fit issues when it came time to put his buttons on. I guess that is just a reminder to always check fit a few times no matter what.
Feel free to shout my praises in the comments. I promise I will only let it go to my head a little bit before our next show.
With lots of vest love,
Tiffany, the greatest #1 Minion you could ever hope for
*I did challenge Nikki to a pocket off, so the Duke ended up with pockets he didn’t really need prop wise. The pocket off was a draw as we were both using the Butterick pocket and it is so nice that even with my edge of having already done pockets, Nikki’s still came out just as nice as mine.