For my Alea Iacta armor, I knew I wanted a very fitted vest. I had to be able to put it on and take it off by myself, while it had all the armor attached. Challenge accepted.
I started w/Simplicity patter 5098
http://sewing.patternreview.com/Patterns/3318 I'm making a hybrid of view C (which is for stretch fabrics) and view D (which is for non-stretch fabrics) Obviously, for the vest, I wanted non-stretch fabric. I'm using a faux suede.
I used the back of view C, but added the darts as seen in view D. For the front, I overlapped patterns C and D.
The key is to line up the lines indicating the waist and line up the "armpit" point.
Cut 1 back, 1 front and 4 of the raglan sleeves. Each sleeve is 2 layers thick so that you can't see the "wrong" side of the fabric. The right sleeve is attached to the front and back of the vest per the pattern instructions. The left sleeve is attached only to the back of the vest. At the front, I used magnetic clasps (snaps or even velcro would work too)
The right side of the vest is sewn shut, the left side features a zipper
I'm currently remaking it due to some issues with the positions of the darts and the armor attachments. But this little setback seemed like a good opportunity to document the process used to make the vest. I'll try to snap some more pics as I'm sewing.
