Monday

Western dress and vest

About ten years ago I received a western catalog with a nice burgundy dress and western vest; I wanted to make something similar. I purchased some burgundy cloth and found some drapery/upholstery cloth with the right pattern for the vest, and never made it until just a couple of weeks ago.

The upholstery cloth had a suitable texture in the pattern design part, but the green on each side had a texture like carpet. I cut it off and sewed black cloth on each side and cut my vest fronts from this. The back of the vest is solid black.
The catalog picture was a two piece dress with the blouse having hidden buttons except for the top one which was silver, as most western buttons are. I used a hidden button blouse pattern and used matching silver buttons on the vest and the top blouse button.

To make it look western, it really needs black cowgirl boots, but I haven’t any black ones and my cream ones do not match. I am thus obliged to wear my burgundy/wine lace up boots. These, along with my re-enacting hat, gives the clothing more of a Victorian western look than a modern western look. I plan to make a matching western purse out of some of the vest upholstery cloth. Lord willing, when this is done, I will post pictures.

2 comments:

sweetlymodest said...

Very pretty. HOw do you come up with all these ideas and ability?

Southern Lady said...

Thank you, Leah. The idea for many projects comes from western catalogs and cowboy craft books.