Winter Sewing: The Green Pepper #507 Plush Polar Vest in Polartec Shearling Fleece

Do you have a box of old clothes that maybe don’t fit or you don’t wear much any more? Perhaps they’re old favorites or sentimental pieces or just clothing that has stood the test of time and you still have them. I do. It’s filled with the first jeans I ever made, a dress from ninth grade that fit through multiple size changes, pieces of uniforms my Dad wore, and a fleece vest from high school. That fleece vest is from L.L.Bean, and my parents bought it for me when we first moved to Massachusetts. Everyone was wearing L.L.Bean and they didn’t want me to feel like any more of an outsider than I already did. I loved that vest. I felt good when I wore it.

I still have that vest packed away, even though it doesn’t quite fit any more. I love a good vest, and I have several, but none quite like that. I got one on sale a few years ago from a different store, but the fleece was inferior, and it soon pilled and looked…not great. I wanted a replacement in high-quality Polartec fleece.

My brother got me the Green Pepper #507 Plush Polar Jacket & Vest pattern in 2021, and my husband gave me the fleece this past Christmas. It was time to make a new vest, and I was really looking forward to it.

Sadly, I didn’t really enjoy making this. Surprising, right? I love Green Pepper patterns because they allow me to make all the classic outdoor wear I find in places like L.L. Bean, Patagonia, and REI. I love sewing fleece, and I have done it most winters for the past several years. And yet, sewing this was Not Fun.

The Green Pepper Plush Polar Vest, front

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The Green Pepper Plush Polar Vest, back

Problem number one was that I second-guessed the directions. The Green Pepper writes really good directions, and I should have just followed them. That doesn’t mean they can never be improved upon or altered and that the patterns can never be hacked. It just means I should have known better and trusted what was there. Problem number two was that it’s not always easy to sew over bulky and sometimes uneven layers of fleece, even when you have all the right tools. Sometimes you have to try and learn, which means struggle.

This pattern is made to be sewn on your sewing machine, no serger necessary. I really wanted some extra secret colors on the inside, so I serged a few seams that would be visible inside.

The Green Pepper Plush Polar Vest, inside front. The neon yellow/green is my serging and secret extra bit of color.

Sometimes my choices to serge were good (extra colors!), and sometimes I thought I could be smarter than the directions and add in serging, which ended up causing problems later because I had cut off seam allowance I should have left on or something like that. I also had a lot of trouble topstitching over multiple layers, even with my walking foot, as things would slide around. While you usually don’t need wide seam allowances on knits, there were times when I wondered if a 5/8″ seam allowance would have been a good idea because you would have (maybe) had more even layers to sew over.

Here are some things that did help me with this project:

*My walking foot was great. This is a foot you can put on your sewing machine that helps your top and bottom fabrics feed through your machine at the same rate so things aren’t sliding around.

*I used a 12/80 ballpoint needle in my sewing machine.

*I hand-basted my zipper, and I hand-basted my collar seamlines and facing in place before sewing down the facing that covers the neck seam. I sewed it down from the inside on both facing edges.

*I checked out the book Adventures with Polarfleece: A Sewing Expedition by Nancy Cornwell from the library (copyright 1997), which helped me change up the bottom of the vest from a hem/casing to a “Lycra Wrapped Edge” (I used “The Cheater’s Way”). I trimmed off one inch at the bottom of the vest where the hem would have been and used the recommendation in the book of a 2″ x 43″ strip of nylon/spandex for my size to finish the bottom edge. I should not have zigzagged the bottom of the vest before applying the nylon/spandex. It would have been better to skip that and just use the book instructions. After fixing that issue, the bottom looked kind of wavy, but once fully finished, it was fine, especially when wearing it. I hand-tacked the corners of the nylon/spandex to keep them perfectly in place. This book has lots of other great tips as well. I hope to pick up a used copy of it at some point. She also wrote two other books on sewing with polarfleece.

The Green Pepper Plush Polar Vest, inside back

*When I got really frustrated, I put this project in time out until I thought things through and had potential solutions to the problems I was having. Taking a break really helped me calm down and figure things out.

Here are a few more details on supplies and sources I used in case you are thinking of making this for yourself:

+fabric (main): Polartec Thermal Pro: Large Clump Shearling/Small Clump Shearling in “Whisper White” from Mill Yardage; 100% polyester, 68″ wide; could this be a Polartec 300 weight?

+fabric (accent): nylon/spandex tricot matte swimwear fabric in “Pink Lite” from my stash, originally from Spandex by Yard; 80% nylon/20% spandex, 200 GSM, 58″-60″ wide

+zippers: YKK #5 molded plastic zippers (jacket and pocket) from Wawak in “lavender”

+thread: 100% polyester thread for sewing machine and serger (I go back and forth between Gutermann and Coats & Clark, depending on who has the best color for what I’m sewing or what I have in my thread stash)

+hanging loop: grosgrain ribbon from my stash, probably made of polyester or nylon

+size: large; I chose based on my measurements; this fits with a fair amount of positive ease

+wish I had: a cute little tag to go on the outside; I’m trying to come up with a design I like and then maybe I’ll have some made.

After wrestling my way through this, here is what I think. This is a great pattern. There are a lot of possibilities for hacks if you want to change things up, copy high end vests or jackets you see in stores, or create things based on your own designs. If I needed 20 vests and jackets, I would have a lot of fun making different iterations of this with cool details and trying out different things. Since I don’t need 20 vests and jackets, I’ll leave the experiments up to you. Your first try may be a little challenging, but maybe not. Either way, it’s definitely a valuable pattern.

All this learning was not only to benefit this project. After this was done, I made the jacket version of this pattern, which I hope to share with you soon. You’ll be happy to know it went much better, thanks to my struggles here.

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Mill Yardage + Pattern and Branch = Neon Pink Polartec Seaforth Pants! Think Pink for Spring!

It’s funny how something can stick in your head for years, and then when the moment is right, you call it up for inspiration. Years ago, I was on the beach, talking to some other moms, and one of them was wearing a pair of shearling fleece sweatpants. They looked so cozy, and I thought what a great idea they were for a beach that is pretty much always either breezy or windy and which is usually significantly cooler than whatever town you are coming from.

Last year, as it got colder and my thoughts turned to winter sewing, I was looking through my main Polartec fabric source, Mill Yardage, and saw some neon pink shearling fleece. I love neon pink, I love shearling, and I love Polartec, so I kept it in mind. I had a few ideas of what I might want to make with it, but the strongest came in the form of that memory of the shearling fleece pants.

Mill Yardage has an inspiration board on their website, and I thought this would be an awesome addition. It said that if you sent in an idea they decided to make for the page, they would send you the same amount of fabric. These pants were a fun idea I wanted to see in the world, and if they also sent me fabric, I could make my own pants. After mulling it over for months, I e-mailed them and shared my idea.

In a short time, I received an e-mail back! They liked the idea, and asked if I would be willing to make the project. I already wanted to make this project, so I said yes! They generously offered any fabric and notions I needed from their site to make the pants, so I sent in my requests, and faster than I could have imagined, had a package of fabric at my door. I was thrilled.

Here was my plan.

I wanted to take the Seaforth Pants from Hey June Handmade, a pattern for elastic-waist, wide-leg pants drafted for woven fabrics, and use View B, which has a narrower leg as my base for this project, since I suspected the pattern could work well for knits as well as the wovens it was drafted for. I wanted to make these in fleece and add a cuff to the bottom for the coziest sweat pants ever. I didn’t want slim joggers. I wanted roomy sweat pants that would feel soft and wonderful when you put them on.

To attempt this, I chose three yards of the long-dreamed-of Polartec Thermal Pro large and small clump shearling in “hot pink” which is nice and wide at 62 inches. I liked the idea of pants with different shades of pink, but I wasn’t sure about the bulkiness of the fabrics I was choosing. I felt confident I could make the shearling work for the pants. Or maybe I just wanted the pants I envisioned so much that I was going to MAKE them work no matter what. You can form your own opinions on that. 😉 But which fabric was the right color for all the extra parts while also not being too thick? I poured over the website time and time again trying to decide. What helped me the most in the end was the box of swatches my husband got me a few years ago. I could feel the fabrics and layer them to see how thick everything would be. So, with a mix of trepidation and confidence, I requested half a yard of Polartec Classic 200 double velour/recycled fleece in “rose petal” because it was the perfect shade of pink for my vision (and 60 inches wide–yay!).

I have made View B of these pants before, so I already had the pattern pieces cut out. I tried on the pants I had made previously just to get a sense of whether or not I wanted to make any changes to the pattern, and to figure out how long I wanted them. The fit of the pattern seemed good as it was. I wanted the inseam to be about three and a half inches longer that what View B is drafted for with a cuff that was two and a half inches tall. If you were following the directions as written for View B, you would lose one and a half inches to the hem allowance, so if I didn’t fold the hem up, and used a half inch seam allowance as in the rest of the pattern, I would need a cuff that was three inches tall for a finished height of two and a half inches. I measured my ankles, did some sketching, and then made a little pattern piece out of tracing paper. I would have to see if this would work.

High-tech calculations! Haha. I changed things a bit before the final iteration.

My cuff pattern piece

Putting the pants together was not hard, although the pockets required a bit of focus. I relied on my sewing machine for the pockets, using a straight stitch since I didn’t need a lot of stretch in those seams. My stitching was a little wobbly, but I knew that once I wasn’t staring at it up close, I wouldn’t notice it. I used sew-in interfacing where interfacing was necessary, because you can’t iron this fleece without melting it, and I basted and pinned things in place until I had sewn them down.

Front pocket

Back pocket

Once all the pockets were on and it was time to put the actual pants together, I got illogically nervous about whether or not they would fit. It didn’t matter that I had tried on the pair I had already made. What if I blew it and this idea didn’t work? So, to make myself feel better, I serged the inseams and crotch seam and then basted the outseams together just in case. Guess what? They were fine. The pattern hadn’t mysteriously morphed into something else. What a shock! My fears were unfounded!

It was coming out great.

My pants before adding a waistband and cuffs

So, I serged up those outseams, put on my waistband, and then got ready to figure out the cuffs.

The cuffs were about half as wide as the lower pant legs. Polartec 200 does stretch, but it was asking a lot of it to stretch so much that I could just sew those cuffs on to the bottom of the bulky Thermal Pro.

I thought about it for a few days, and then mulled over my options with my best problem solving friends. In the end, I machine stitched around the bottom of the pants with a basting stitch and then gathered them. I then hand basted the cuffs to the pants and tried them on.

I used this box to hold the circumference I needed while hand basting

They seemed good, so I used my sewing machine, which I’m more skillful with than my serger, to sew them together with a zigzag stitch.

Wonky, but attached…

Then I went around again with my serger to neaten everything up. And it worked! The pants were perfect!

Cuffs serged on and looking much neater

Success! Yay!

Yes, these pants ARE extremely bright in person. I love them.

That being said, if you decide to try this, you may have more luck making the cuffs from something really stretchy like a thinner Power Stretch or just skipping the cuffs altogether and binding the bottoms of the pants with binding or something. HOWEVER, if you are as stuck on an idea like this as I was, the old adage holds true that where there is a will, there is usually a way.

When I finished these, I was THRILLED. These pants were exactly what I was going for! Spring may be right around the corner, but at least where I live in New England, these pants will get more wear than just in winter (these will come to the beach with me). Here is what I can tell you about wearing these. They are extremely soft, and they are extremely warm. That Thermal Pro is no joke. As soon as I put these on, I felt the warmth.

In our area, as soon as there is a whiff of spring and a nice-ish day, people kind of lose it and race to the beach. Seriously. People do not waste nice weather here. So, naturally, I had to go too. 😀 The beach was probably twenty degrees (Fahrenheit) cooler than our town and windy, which was perfect for testing the pants. The wind does come through a bit, but less so than, say, this sweatshirt I made.

These sweat pants are beach approved!

If you were wearing this fabric in winter with a base layer, you would probably feel pretty good. For a cool, but not bitterly cold wind, it was just right. You can easily believe that I saved all my scraps in the hopes of more fun projects when the temperature dips again next fall/winter.

I think that all the things recommended on the website for this shearling fabric (coats, vests, heavy blankets) would be perfect applications. For instance, wouldn’t this be a fun lining for a winter-worthy jean jacket? Or a shearling vest? And, the Polartec 200 was not too bulky for all my accent pieces. In fact, it was just right. I would say it feels just a little bit thicker than a beefy t-shirt.

After sewing this pattern in fleece, I have a few tips on ways to reduce bulk if you try this yourself.

Increase the seam allowance on the pockets where they are topstitched to the pants just a bit to make them even easier to sew on. When folding those same seam allowances under, cut out a little square where they overlap right at the corner. Just don’t cut too far in. On your back pockets, just fold the tops over once and stitch down since the raw edge won’t fray. I would also probably eliminate the back darts on the pants. If you opt not to remove the darts, you can cut the dart folds open on the inside after sewing them rather than folding them to the side to make things a little less bulky in the back.

Anyone can have regular sweat pants, but it’s the people who make their own clothes who can have extraordinary sweat pants. 😉

Thanks again to Mill Yardage for providing this excellent fabric. As of this writing, both fabrics look like they are still available.

I’ll leave you with this song and dance from the Movie “Funny Face”. Think pink!

Patagonia-Inspired Vest in Insulated Carhartt Canvas and Polartec Fleece

My vest is finally done!!! I’m so excited to share it with you!

This vest began several years ago, when I saw a cool Patagonia outerwear vest with a Western-style yoke in a surprising color combination at Nordstrom. (Nordstrom is a great place to “shop” for inspiration!) While I know that Patagonia is a great company that produces clothes of excellent quality, it is not in my price range. So, I filed away the idea for later and moved on. (Sadly, I can’t find a picture of my inspiration vest in my files, but here are the ones that I looked at while planning this project–women’s, men’s.)

This past summer, while visiting family in Michigan, I went to Field’s Fabrics in Holland, MI, and saw this great Carhartt canvas insulated with Thinsulate.

It’s funny that the name on the roll is spelled “Carhardt”, but if you look on the website at the link above, you’ll see it’s spelled correctly: “Carhartt”. Just a typo, not a knock-off!

I had seen it at the store on a previous trip, and always wished I had bought some, so this time I did. My initial idea? A winter snap-front skirt to wear over leggings. I love those short, insulated skirts for winter! My Mom looked at the fabric, though, and suggested making a vest. At first I ruled it out, but as I thought more and more about the idea, I realized that it was a good one. I would wear a vest more than a skirt and it would fit me longer if I sized it correctly. And I remembered that Patagonia vest from way back. That’s when I got excited.

Deciding on all the specifics of fabric and pattern and any tweaks I wanted to make took a long time. My fabrics were originally not very cozy (other than the insulated canvas) because I was going purely on colors that worked together, but eventually, with input from my family, I decided to use a beloved piece of wool for my yoke that I have had in my stash for I don’t know how long, just waiting for the right project. At that point, I needed to rethink my lining layer to make everything look good together. I found a cream colored Polartec 200 Thermal Pro curly fleece online at The Rain Shed that was on sale, and looked like it just might work. I ordered it with some pocket zippers and bit the bullet on the insane shipping cost (so expensive!) since the fabric itself was such a good price.

The fabric was perfection with what I already had, but the hardware wasn’t quite there yet. I ditched my first zipper idea and ordered some metal ones with brass pulls from zipit on Etsy.

I have used their zippers before, and they are pretty cool looking. Brass heavy duty snaps from Joann Fabrics completed my hardware search.

If you try these, make sure you get a package with a setting tool (not pictured) if you don’t already have one.

For my pattern, I chose the Men’s Santiam Reversible Vest #102 from The Green Pepper Patterns.

There is a women’s vest, but I was outside the size range, and it didn’t seem like a big deal to curve out the hips on the men’s one if necessary. Time to get started!

The goal? Create an outerwear vest with the Western yoke of the Patagonia example that would be large and roomy enough to fit over my bulkiest sweater and thickest fleece leggings or jeans. And make it cozy! In order to get the fit I wanted, I followed the pattern’s directions to take measurements over the clothes I wanted to wear the vest with. This put me at a chest and waist size XL, and a hip size 2XL.

To keep this post from getting too long, I’ll list out the tweaks I made to the pattern instead of talking through them. Here’s what I changed:

*created a yoke piece to attach to the outer layer of the vest, front and back

*graded the hips out to a larger size, which meant that the side of the handwarmer pockets needed to be reshaped, and the angle of the pocket zippers needed to change to mirror the angle of the hips

The original pattern piece is in green marker; my alterations are in pencil

*created a longer back hem that curved down by tracing a vintage Woolrich puffer vest; this is also a feature on the Patagonia vests I linked to

You can see the longer back extending down in this picture

The vest from the back, fleece side out

*created a pattern piece for wool strips that would attach to the fleece; I planned to fuse interfacing to the wool strips, hoping that this would be a more stable option for the snaps to attach to rather than the fleece (I previously made a fleece cardigan using sew-in interfacing, and a few of the anorak snaps I used as closures pulled away from my fleece–I was hoping to prevent that here)

*stay-stitched the yoke so nothing would stretch out

*flipped the directions so that my inner layer would have zipper pockets and my outer layer would have hand warmer pockets

Zipper pockets; I gave the fleece around the zippers a tiny trim before calling it good

Handwarmer pockets

*used leftover woven Supplex from this project for my zipper pockets and half of my handwarmer pockets rather than the canvas and fleece to reduce bulk

By the time I had decided on all these little details, I started to get nervous that I was going to forget something! I had already forgotten that the seam allowance on this pattern was 3/8″, and ended up creating the pattern for my wool strips with one side having a 3/8″ seam allowance and the other one having a 5/8″ seam allowance.

Before beginning anything, though, I had to prewash all my fabric, which included that insulated canvas. The canvas is quilted to a batting layer which has a scrim, but no additional fabric.

Canvas, batting, and scrim, all quilted together; the scrim is a thin layer over the batting that helps stabilize and hold everything together

I didn’t want it to get messed up in the washer, so I basted an old sheet onto the back side, put a few safety pins in the middle to sort of pin-baste it, and threw it in the washer. Luckily, it worked! I just seam-ripped the sheet off after it was all done and saved it for another purpose.

Once I was ready to cut everything out…I had to stop. Just before cutting I realized (thankfully) that the brick quilting pattern on the canvas needed to be lined up as much as possible so the horizontal lines matched! I got things as close as I could. The quilting wasn’t always possible to line up perfectly, whether because of shrinkage from prewashing or because it wasn’t exact. I got it done, though, and then it was on to the Polartec fleece–but wait! This had a nap, which means it’s a directional fabric–you want the fleece to all lie in the proper direction! Back through the cobwebs of my memory floated the time I had accidentally cut curly fleece upside down for a sweatshirt project and had to recut it. Didn’t want to do that again! Ok. Fleece all cut out, it was on to the yoke. But I wanted that on the bias since it would look nice that way and–oh! The shoulders needed to be pattern matched!

Decent pattern matching on the shoulder seam!

It was crazy. Every time I thought something would be straightforward, it wasn’t, but nevertheless, I’m so very thankful I realized those things before I cut all the layers out.

I think it’s fair to say I procrastinated a lot on this project. Any time I knew I would have to do something tricky or scary, I paused, but eventually I would forge ahead, hoping it would turn out all right. And luckily, it did. The pattern instructions were very good, and the vest was really interesting to sew. I used my regular sewing machine for construction and my serger for finishing seams, although you don’t need one. The instructions tell you to finish your seams with a zigzag stitch.

I completed this just in time for some really cold weather that came our way. And I love it!

Now don’t be fooled–this vest is a massive beast of winter. This is no lightweight indoor vest. It’s big and a little bit heavy, though not uncomfortably so.

It has plenty of extra ease to go over my biggest sweater (just like I hoped!), and it’s so nice and warm. That collar can really keep out the wind, too!

Happily, it’s just what I wanted, and all the design and hardware choices really combined to make it look professional and rugged. And it’s reversible! Even the snaps!

Both the pattern and the snap pack mentioned that you can use the decorative snap caps on both sides to make your project reversible, so I tried it and it worked! Success!

Now I have one more unique garment that fits me just right for winter. Yay!

Update:

I entered this vest in the 2022 Topsfield Fair (in Topsfield, MA) and it won both a first place ribbon and Best in Show in the Sewing Division!

Burda Style 6471 Joggers in Recycled Polartec Thermal Pro

Yayyyy, fleecy pants!  My batch of sewing projects is now at the sewing phase, which makes me very happy.  Today I want to share my version of Burda Style 6471, View A (with a few modifications).  I made these in recycled Polartec Thermal Pro denim look in a color called Aspen (green).  This fabric was a gift from my wonderful husband and came from Mill Yardage.

I got this pattern in my stocking the Christmas before last, but have been waiting for just the right fabric.  My goal was to find a fabric that would look good as everyday wear while feeling like secret pajamas.  I was hoping this fabric would do that, but after making these, they are more of a really nice spin on sweat pants.  It turns out, I’m ok with that.  I’ve still worn them out of the house, but I definitely feel like I’m wearing sweat pants when I do.

Let’s talk details.

Constructing the Pattern

The only pattern alteration I made was to grade up one size from the largest size.  I did this by looking at how much t the largest one or two sizes increased by and doing the same to create a larger size.

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I chose to make View A of this pattern because I wanted the longer length, but I left off the square side pockets and the drawstring.  This pattern was supposed to have a flat front to the waistband with an elastic back, but I made a few choices based on my fabric that caused me to change the waistband.  You are supposed to interface the front of the waistband.  I felt nervous using a fusible, because I didn’t want to iron this fabric and melt it.  I did find a few discussions in the Pattern Review forums where people mentioned ways to fuse interfacing on fleece.  Many other people said they skipped interfacing altogether.  I did have some sew-in interfacing, but I got nervous that if I used it, the back waistband might not have enough give/length to fit over my hips when taking the pants on and off since they are a pull-on style (the fly is a faux fly and the waistband is continuous with no closure).  Usually I try to trust the pattern, but laziness was also a bit of a factor, so I skipped interfacing the front of the waistband.

When I finished the pants, which were a very quick sew, they fit pretty well.  As I write this, I’m just now realizing what a big deal it is that the crotch curve fit me so well the first time around.  That doesn’t always happen!  Anyway, I wore them around for a bit, and realized that the waistband definitely got looser with wear.  This fabric has a small amount of stretch and no recovery.  I could see that I needed to tighten up the back waistband elastic, so I did.  Then I wore them some more.  Then they got loose.  I could see my options were to go back and redo the waistband with interfacing, maybe even adding the drawstring, or to make the waistband a fully elasticated one.  Since I could tell that these were definitely in the sweat pants camp, and I didn’t have to try to make them everyday pants anymore, I opted to elasticate the whole waistband.

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This is when I realized one other thing.  These are fairly low-rise pants.  They’re not super low, but they’re low enough that when you bend over or crouch down, you should make sure your backside is covered.  The rise is consistent with the picture on the pattern.  If I ever make these again, making the rise a little higher would be a good idea.

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Lastly, for anyone who is trying to sew fleece like this, here are the specific settings I used on my sewing machine.  I did not use a serger.

• regular zigzag stitch
• 2.5 stitch width
• 1.0 stitch length
• 1 presser foot pressure (lightest)
• 4 tension (standard tension; I didn’t change it from my normal setting)
• 90/14 stretch needle
• walking foot
• Gütermann all purpose polyester thread in the needle and wooly/bulky nylon in the bobbin

When sewing knits, I always test out my stitches on a piece of scrap fabric and then stretch it as much as possible to see if the thread breaks.  If it does, I test some more until I get a stitch that doesn’t break when stretched parallel and perpendicular to my stitch line.

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Final Thoughts

I often expect every sewing project to be THE BEST and most wonderful garment, and I cut them much less slack than I do store-bought/thrifted clothes.  I think that’s not a good way to continue on.  This garment isn’t the best, most wonderful garment I have ever made, but I still really love it.  I think it’s because the fleece is so cozy.  The pattern is good, the sewing is not bad, and the fabric feels great.  The fit is pretty good, if a bit low.  I think that I will get a lot of wear out of these pants, even if they weren’t what I first envisioned.