Finery for the little man

The Boy has his First Communion coming up, and they need to have some fancy dress for this momentous occassion.  He gets to drink wine.  In church.

I know some kids will likely show up in suits, but I didn’t want to waste money on something that would get worn all of one time before he grew out of it.  This logic, will of course, be thrown out the window when the Girl has her First Communion next year.  Bride-like dress…here I come!

We bought him a dress shirt and dress pants that should work for multiple occassions.  He was less than thrilled with the purple shirt, as I am sure he would rather have a RED shirt (his favorite color).  I don’t think that would be appropriate, though, plus this is stylish.

Next on the agenda, was making him a vest and tie.

The vest pattern was another DIY drafting experiment.  I just took a shirt pattern and redrew it for what the lines of a vest would look like.  I added darts in the back where the cincher was placed.

This is the proto-type for his vest.  The armholes were not big enough, the shoulders too wide, and the back cincher was too far down.  I corrected that in the final model.  Thus, the reason to make a muslin!  The fabric is just a black polyester and a black denim with a overpattern of black animal print in some kind of plasticy material.  Not machine-washable friendly, as I learned at one point after I made a pair of pants out of it.

This was the final model.  I originally bought this fabric for a vest for me.  Luckily I have enough left that I should be able to squeeze one out, yet.  I thought this was a great boy-friendly, yet dressed up fabric.  I just needed to buy the grey satin for the lining, vest back and the tie.

The tie was a tutorial and pattern from The Purl Bee.  It has two patterns: one for a smallish boy and one for a grade-schooler.  It was a 50″ tie for the larger boy pattern, which was the length we found in the department store.  Make note to cut it on the bias.  I was not paying attention well enough on that.  Oh well.  It will likely get worn for 2 hours, so he will just have to make do!

He should look all spiffy in his dress clothes!

ETA:

Here he is wearing it!