Marvin the Martian Vest

I love Marvin the Martian from the Looney Tunes cartoons. A friend gave me the two 'Marvin' fabric snippets. I wanted a 'spacey' feel to the vest, so many of the fabrics are stars or have planets printed on them. Some fabrics just have an outer space look to them and were fun to work with. The back of the vest has a nice v-shaped insert of a fun blue print near the top of the vest..

This is the vest I wear to book signing events. I wrote Harriet's Horrible Hair Day, a picture book for children. In the upper right corner of the vest is a pin of a girl with wild red hair that a quilting friend gave me. The books are paper-pieced from my own design, and I machine-embroidered real book titles on the book spines. The buttons feature Egyptian hieroglyphics, the closest I could come to writing at the time.

Crazy Quilt Vest

I sewed this vest at a crazy-quilt vest workshop given by Jan Benander. What a terrific day! I pieced most of the vest fronts at the workshop, then added hand embroidery, beads, ribbon flowers and more lace. The vest fabrics are silk, satin, velvet, cotton and some lightweight brocade.

Christmas Vest

I needed a vest for a company Holiday party. Since at the time I worked for a company that manufactured holiday ornaments, it seemed appropriate to create a Christmas vest featuring Christmas decorations. The company had sample ribbon swatches they were discarding in holiday patterns such as gold holly leaves on green ribbon. I used the ribbon to make the two Christmas balls on the vest. Sequins decorate the tree. Santa's face is hand embroidered. All four picture blocks are paper-pieced. The side panels are of a Christmas fabric showing cats amidst holiday presents.