This undemanding, raspberry-coloured vest started life as furniture. The little square of soft, unevenly faded, slightly floppy, discarded bit of used upholstery came to OSF in a personal donation. I imagine the donor hesitating: Keep. Throw. Donate! Surely
someone can find some use for this!
It spent days in the Free Box, until I couldn't ignore it any more. I love the way the fading suggests its original use: I guess an ottoman, or the seat of a chair. It was very dirty, and crusty with glue, so I serged the edges, chucked it in the washer and dryer and crossed my fingers. It came out beautifully: soft-soft, and as lovely on the one side as the other. I knew I had found just the right fabric for the plastic tortoise shell/metal elephant buttons I had loved as a child, sorting through my mother's button tin. I drafted this little vest to use up as much of the fabric as possible. There was barely enough left after cutting to
test the sewing machine tension.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhahw3TfwmOB8fpU85_Er9P_stZssoeshWfw3PLV7giOzeQ4oXlq7T6Mvl1MEKkxKXGi9_71q2Pt75t41MQaWYRXVLCeihCh9uT-BDUz3l_qJblx2zHacJvwl_KtGGk1ocFMZ_cwE8DqUY/s1600/DSC_2418.jpg)
Sadly, my mother's buttons had become too brittle, and one of them broke after it was sewn on. They were replaced with lonely, mismatched, fabric-covered buttons I've also been saving for the right garment. I hope these buttons originally belonged to lady-like, little jacket-and-skirt sets with 3/4-length sleeves. Worn with gloves. Maybe an imitation leopard-skin pillbox hat...
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