Halloween 2017: The Chase Vest

Wow, it was way back in February that I made the hat for this costume. I must have thought that I would be speeding through all the other pieces in record time, just because one piece was done. But now it is almost October and I just finished the vest. Realistically, the vest is the most important part of the costume and could work with the hat as a whole costume. Your child could wear a pair of favorite pants and a long sleeve tee—better if both were brown like dog fur—although I am committed to making the whole thing and I have all this brown fleece.

Here’s another picture of Chase to remind you what I’m trying to create:

The vest should have a center zipper, a collar (it is a dog, after all), his badge, and military stripes on the shoulder. If you look closely, you can also see pockets near the front bottom of the vest.

I started with this plain vest pattern, moving the chest pocket to the side-hip area, and attached Chase’s badge to the zipper pull. I put a little more yellow into the finished vest by using yellow plastic zippers to echo the yellow features in the original.

The pattern called for fleece, edged with stretch elastic binding. I used a medium weight cotton and double fold bias tape for the edging. I sent away for the shoulder stripes and stars appliques, as well as for the badge appliques (front and back of the pull).

The hardest part to figure out was the pockets. The pattern has side-seam interior pockets, but the opening was too small for the called-for 5″ zippers, and they would have been covered. So, I sewed up the side seam and put pockets on the outside. I used the idea of the upper chest pocket, which has two pieces joined with a zipper, but I used the larger lower pocket pattern piece, doubling it, and adding a strip for the side. Then I just boxed in the zipper with upper and lower strips of fabric and topstitched it on the vest:

You’ll also notice that the pattern calls for a band on the collar, which worked just right as Chase’s dog collar. I used black for the trim there and on the armhole edges. I was worried at first about the entire vest looking like it belonged to Chase, but it worked out better than I expected. I’m even thinking about making the vest for myself in the quilted version.