Today I’m sharing my review of the Veronica Vest by Just Patterns.

I’ve gotta say that I’ve fallen hard for the vest or waistcoat trend and have been longingly wanting to sew one for more than a year or so now.

As soon as I saw the Veronica Vest released by Just Patterns last year, I knew this was the one for me. I found its proportions to be just spot on.

Tailored, clean, sleek.

I purchased it immediately and then it took six months before I got around to sewing it! As often happens with me.

What can I say, my sewing dreams are always far grander than my sewing time!

I must also admit that I think I put off sewing this project a bit because, from a distance, I thought that the project looked a tad intimidating. I was in a bit of an “oh no I cannot handle welt pockets right now” sewing mood for a few months.

But I am happy to report that once I started, I was very pleasantly surprised by how quickly it all came together!

My Veronica Vest

My Veronica Vest is a size 44 at the bust, graded to a size 46 for the waist and hips. I used the size range for a B/C cup. There is also a size range developed for a DD cup. The maximum available size caters for a bust of 146cm (approx. 57″), waist of 126cm (approx. 49″) and hips of 152cm (approx 60″).

I sewed this Veronica Vest in the same wool crepe that I used for these Tatjana trousers I sewed about a year ago. YEAH for saving scraps! I had just enough to get this vest out of it! It came from The Fabric Sales in Belgium, but was purchased ages ago now. I made the lining out of my Veronika Vest out of viscose scraps from a Closet Core Nicks dress. So this was a real scrap busting project!

Here’s a bit of a sewing-in-real-life-truth. I cannot currently wear those Tatjana trousers as I’ve put on too much weight. So my dream of looking suave in perfectly matching tailored trousers and vest combo hasn’t been fully realised. But, who know, maybe I’ll be able to wear the trousers again one day!

Veronika Vest: Sewing Experience

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I found the sewing experience for the Veronika Vest to be mostly straightforward. In fact, it was all coming along so fast I was amazed.

Until I got to the stage of attaching the lining and the shell!

When I became confused.

But I’ll get to that.

There are a couple of tutorials available on the Just patterns website to walk you through the welt pockets as well as assembling the linings. I didn’t use the former but found the latter very useful as I got myself a bit confused when assembling the front lining. For some reason the version of the pattern I printed didn’t have the right notches on one piece (or I managed to miscut and cut them off somehow), so I wasn’t entirely sure which way I needed to attach a piece at some point.

I would also point out that I didn’t realise until it was too late that there was an error in the lining pieces of the pattern (only if you purchased before 13 December 2022). So I made things work by altering the size of the pleat in the lining. But if you also bought the pattern during the first couple of months of its release, check out the information concerning this on the resource page of Just Patterns website for updated pieces. Purchases from 13 December 2022 aren’t affected.

Now, I did find the step of attaching the lining and the shell to be confusing.

In fact, I totally messed it up.

To me, step 16 of the instructions made it look as though you were supposed to attach the shell and the lining at the hem with the garment still inside out. Which was what I did.

Which made it impossible to turn it all to the right side.

Which I only eventually realised after a good twenty minutes or so of trying to desperately tug my garment in all directions. But given that I’d created something that somewhat resembled a mobius strip, it was an endless cycle of pulling towards nothingness.

Eventually, I pulled so hard that my armhole seams started to unravel. At which point, I decided to unpick them and close my Veronika Vest at the armhole by topstitching.

So I’ve failed to get the proper clean finish the pattern is designed to have!

Unfortunately, because I didn’t manage to do this step successfully, I’m still not really sure exactly what I was supposed to have done to do it properly.

I reached out to Delphine at Just Patterns (who is absolutely lovely!!) and I think that what I was supposed to have done was to turn the garment right side out before sewing the hem and then manipulate the garment to still be sewing the hem edges right side together. Similarly to when you bag a lining by machine and attach the lining and shell together at the cuff.

But, to me, I just really didn’t understand this from step 16 of the English instructions!

But all is well that ends well – and I have a vest! The shell is on the outside, the lining is on the inside.

Everything is ok in the end!

Having finished this project, I really want to highlight that my expectations at the beginning and the end result have aligned very well.

I think that the cut of the Veronika Vest is just fantastic. It is equally wearable on its own or with layers underneath.

I was also very pleased to discover that the fit was spot-on for my body (and no, I didn’t make a muslin to test this out first)!

I could not imagine a better way to jump into the vest trend!

And now I’m kind of trawling through my fabric scraps to see what other fabrics I have leftover from when I’ve made trousers that I could make a matching vest for!!