Waistcoat finished! Excitement!

My posting frequency has gone right down, I know, but that's because I've been busy working on new patterns and sewing!  Hopefully there might be a rash (or at least a dribble) of posts with exciting freebies in, within a month or so...

Anyways, as the title suggests, I'm done with the waistcoat!

Baby has not tried it on yet because I'm terrified of ruining it before Uncle's wedding day.  Even though I know there will be sick or dribble on it within 5 minutes.

The best thing about this is the "free"-ness of it: it's just fabric I had lying around which I'd already mentally written-off the cost of!  The front is some light-weight woven silk brocade from Hong Kong which I used to make a dress for a friend about 10 years ago.  The back is several layers of "premium" white dress-lining fabric.  I think the pattern would work well in almost any fussy "special" fabric for the front, with slippy lining for the back.

Woo: covered buttons!

I'd forgotten how tricky slippy fabrics are to sew with.  It's what I learned on, so I didn't realise how fiddly they were until now, when I've had 6 months' break from them making cotton baby things.  I had a bit of bother with them fraying and stretching.  Particularly since the white lining is so translucent that you can see the selvedges through it on the finished waistcoat: frayed selvedges look the worst inside that.  I saw it on a bespoke waistcoat once and it spoiled it, so I was pretty careful about not handling the fabric too much, especially after the seam allowances were trimmed short.

I toyed with the idea of false welt-pockets on the front, but in the end I decided it was too much on such a small waistcoat.  Perhaps they'll appear on Moonraker 2.0 for a bigger baby.  It's not like he needs anywhere for all that stuff he carries around: he's got a minder for that!

My mum expressed shock over a pink waistcoat for a boy (or at least what sounded like surprise on the phone).  What do you think?  Real men wear pink shirts, right?  Plus, it's nice and wedding-y I think.

Anyway, I'm thinking of giving this pattern away for free, when I've done the instructions... any takers?