cowboy vest tutorial

Howdy partners!

As a boy mom, I'm always looking for crafty things to make for my little guys, but honestly, it's fairly slim pickins. So when Henry asked me last week to make him a Cowboy Vest like Sheriff Woody and Sheriff Callie, I jumped on that horse faster than a tumbleweed in a tornado.

{Sorry, my inner Texan is coming out on this one. I'll try to stop.}

Being a true Texas girl, I just happened to have some cow print fabric lying around (doesn't everybody?) and some left over red jersey fabric from Henry's Super Hero Cape, so no trip to the fabric store required. I love it when that happens.

Henry used to have a cowboy vest in his life. We borrowed this beauty made my my boss and friend Lindsay for her little buckaroo the prior Halloween. OMGeeee my belly was so big. This was just 9 days before my due date with Max. I was having contractions and thought we might just have a Halloween baby.

He didn't come for 13 more days. Figures.




I wanted his new vest to be similar to the one he wore last year, only bigger (obviously) and with a little extra personal touch. Here's how I did it.

THE GOODS

• 1/2 yard cow print fabric (or whatever you like)
• 1/2 yard contrasting fabric for lining (I used red jersey)
• coordinating thread
• sheet of gold felt
• embroidery thread (optional)
• Pattern pieces

STEP ONE: Cut out your pattern pieces and fabric. You can download the one I used for free HERE. Print at 100% scale (do not shrink to fit). You'll need to cut your lining fabric and your cow fabric with these templates. Pay attention to right sides and wrong sides to make sure it all matches up nicely in the end. I always screw that up, so I just made sure my lining fabric didn't have a right or wrong side (because I'm a lazy genius).

This is approximately a size 3T-4T. Feel free to increase or decrease to fit your kid. My pattern is based off of a winter vest that fit him pretty well.

You'll need one back panel and two fronts. Line your front pattern piece along a fold and cut 2 pieces. They'll be a mirror image of each other.

It really helps if your kids yank the fabric out from under you while you cut.

My liner fabric was in pieces, so I stitched 2 pieces together to make my back panel.
Only do this if you have to! I just hate wasting scraps.

Your pieces will look like this, only you're liner back panel probably won't have a seam in it.

STEP TWO: Pin your fabric right-sides together, making sure to leave an opening of about 4" so you can turn this bad boy inside out later.

All pinned up. You can see on the left that I left a gap to turn this out.

This is what it looked like sewn together, before I turned it out.

Now, turn it inside out. Use a pencil or your finger to press all of the corners to a sharp point.
It looks puffy like a Mickey Mouse vest. We'll fix that.

STEP THREE: Close up the arm holes. There is probably a fancy seamstress way of doing this, but I just overlapped the shoulder pieces by 1/4" or so and stitched them together with a straight stitch.

STEP FOUR: Time to close it up. Fold your fabric under about 1/4" to close the gap. I then went around all of the edges and sewed them down, 1/8" away from the edge, to give it a finished look.

Stitch the opening shut.

Sew 1/8" from all edges to give the vest a finished look.
I used my overcasting foot and red thread, just to be cool.

Ta da!

STEP FIVE: To make it extra special, I used the embroidery attachments on my machine to make a badge that says "Sheriff Henry." Obviously, if you don't have that equipment, you could just cut out a star and use a sharpie or something to write your kids name. Or just cut a star. Or just forget the whole dad gum thing and be done with it.

I considered sewing it right onto the vest, but then thought about how many times this thing might need to go through the wash, or that Max might wanted to wear it one day. I decided to attach it with a safety pin instead.

I get asked this a lot, so I'll share it here. I use a Brother sewing/embroidery combo machine. I've had it for about 2 years and L O V E  I T.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Henry, in his typical 3 year old fashion, now refuses to wear it. He does this with absolutely everything I make. I try not to take it personally and remember that he's 3, and being jerky is kind of what they do. He'll want it again just as soon as one of his friends shows interest in it.

I did bribe him with television to take these photos. You can just see the joy in his eyes.

Also, I couldn't convince him to take the Disney Planes shirt off for the photo, so there you have it.


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