Sewing a Faux-fur Vest

Hello Bernina lovers!

We are in midst of those winter months when I love sewing statement garments. I find that in Spring or Summer you can quickly sew a skirt or a dress (or many of them!) but in winter the pieces that we sew are usually of a different level of difficulty, and the type of fabric we usually use is heavier, thicker, warmer…

Ideas and tutorials for your next sewing adventure

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The Wow Effect as I like to call it

This winter I needed basic winter garments that would be the master pieces of my daily wear. I love comfort when I dress up, but I really need to wear a statement garment or a master piece that has the wow effect.

For that, I designed a couple of pieces that are perfect for winter. Here I’ll talk about the first one, and soon I’ll talk about the second one.

The first one I designed was a Vest. Why a Vest, you could ask… I find that a Vest is wearable in so many occasions and all year long, depending on the fabric you use to make it with.

The Vest I designed, I imagined it in faux-fur for the winter.

The idea is to add layers to your outfit, as you can wear this vest on top of a blouse, or even on top of a jacket or a coat!

I made the first 2 versions on faux fur that have warm colors. And obviously, I couldn’t make the exact same version (if you know me a little bit, you may have noticed that I like giving choices and options on my patterns so you get a unique handmade garment every time you sew 😉 )

So the first one I made was a long version Sweet Winter Vest and the second one was a shorter one. I love wearing them as I explained above but also at home, they are so comfy and warm!

After that, I looked through my fabric stash and I found faux leather and mouton-like pieces, big enough to try a rockier, yet cosy, vest.

So here I am, with all my versions that I wear daily.

At the beginning I was afraid of sewing faux fur, as it is super slippery (don’t even get me started on the vacuuming needed after sewing faux fur 😉 ), and I was even more afraid of sewing the faux fur with a viscose as for the 2 fabrics react completely differently under the needle.

Also, add to that the fact that it is difficult to pin faux fur, so I used my sewing clips.

I had the same feeling when sewing the faux leather to the mouton-like fabric.

But, I was really “wowed” when sewing the different fabrics using my Bernina 570. I used my dual feed foot and both fabrics, as different as they were, were moving at the same speed and the match of the pieces was perfect. Yey! I couldn’t be happier for having the perfect machine to follow my sewing needs.

You can find the Sweet Winter Vest pattern here if you want to give it a try.

Have you sewn faux-fur fabric already? What do you think of it?

If not, you may be afraid to attack such type of fabric or you may not have the same machine… well, no worries, we have written a nice article with sewing tips to sew faux-fur. You can find the article here.

And while I am writing, I was thinking that the cosy-and-at-home-style-vest can be matched with a pair of home slippers. I wrote about them a few weeks ago on this article. You can use your faux-fur, faux-leather or whatever fabric you use for your vest to make these comfy slippers, and it will be a matchy matchy home style.

If you are also interested in how to wear your vest out of home 😉 you can check our fashion style article here that will explain you how to wear your faux-fur vest using your wardrobe pieces.