Joaquina Design Studio: Creating an Elemental Vest

So just how long does it take to make slow fashion? From concept to finished piece, it can take as long as a year or more. In the case of my Elemental Vest, it took nine months from the time I rust dyed a piece of cloth, decided what to do with that cloth, and then made it happen.

Last summer I experimented with rust dyeing various fabric remnants. The photo below shows a few examples. The large round halo print was made on a piece of cotton sheeting with a rusty old stove burner cover. I thought this print would be an interesting design element on a garment, but I didn't have anything particular in mind.

Several months later, I got the urge to make a vest for winter, which I did, using wool. It struck me that the rusty halo print would be ideal to place on half of a vest front. The idea began to percolate. I knew I'd need more fabric to piece an entire vest together. Indigo blue and rusty orange are some of my favorite color pairings, so I rummaged through my stash of salvaged chambray shirts. Whatever fabric I chose would have to be a similar light weight as the rust-printed cotton sheeting. I pulled out the remains of an old shirt that was shibori-dyed with indigo. The cloth was shredded and frayed in many areas, but that didn't matter. In fact, those shreds had become almost chenille-like over time and I liked that textural element.

Much auditioning of indigo scraps followed until I had the right-sized pieces to form the top sections of the vest front.

For the other half of the vest front, I used a piece of cotton that was printed with a variety of smaller rusty objects, including an old faucet handle.

My husband looked at the work in progress and suggested that the big space in the center of the rusty halo would look cool with a print of the faucet handle in its center.

What a brilliant guy he is! I just happened to have a scrap of cotton sheeting available, so I made a little faucet handle print and appliqued it to the center of the halo, echoing the same faucet print on the other half of the vest.

Now the real labor of love commenced. I began adding free-form embroidery stitching to the printed shapes for extra definition.

I also added sashiko running stitches over the areas of shredded indigo cloth to secure the threads and prevent further fraying.

At last I had the two front halves pieced, stitched, and ready to join to the back.

You can barely see the outline of where pockets used to be located on that shredded indigo-dyed shirt. (I saved those for some other purpose). Since the front of this vest has so much going on, I opted for a plain piece of solid cotton muslin for the vest back. But just for fun, I used that same rusty faucet handle to create a print on a small scrap of the indigo-dyed cloth, and appliqued this printed patch to the center back of the vest.

The project came together nicely. I designed the vest to be loose-fitting and boxy, but also added drawstring casings at the shoulders to create soft gathers. The drawstrings were made from strips of the indigo-dyed shirt plackets.

Designing a garment with upcycled materials demands patience and plenty of planning. Rarely does a piece of work turn out exactly as envisioned. The Elemental Vest began simply from my desire to use that rusty halo print. Little did I expect the process to be so involved. But the final result was so worthwhile. I know I will never replicate this vest with exactly the same materials and details. That uniqueness makes it pretty special.