Vest tips
A friend of mine made an interesting vest of cordoroy blocks. She cut out 4 x 4 squares and pieced them together fliping each one in a different direction. Then cut her vest fronts so that the squares were diagonal (like diamonds)
even though it was all the same fabric the variation of the nap made it look like she had used 4 different shades of corduroy.<< By cutting the front panel on a 30 degree-bias how does that affect the nap and the color of the corduroy? This is a very interesting idea.
I made one of these vests from Nancy's book, Sew Easy Embellishments.
A couple of tips, make sure that you use a very good fusible interfacing to back the pieces, along with a good press cloth and lots of steam. At times I even wet my press cloth and for extra steam to get a good bond.
Tip 2 - I used bias tape to cover my squares, 15 yards that I made myself. Make sure that whatever you use can cover the squares completely. I had to go back over some of the squares after the first wearing because they were not totally caught under the bias tape.
Tip 3 - This is an easy project in terms of sewing skill, but a timely one. You are actually making a piece of fabric and then constructing the vest.
Tip 4 - Make sure the fusible interfacing has some give to it especially using corduroy, because the piece will be very stiff, I recommend using a knit tricot or similar type of interfacing.
My vest is very dramatic looking because I made it out of solid black squares and a black/white checked square with black bias binding. The back is solid black and the buttons are white circles on a black base. I get a lot of compliments when I wear it, but I wanted to tear my hair out when I was fusing the squares to the interfacing. They kept falling off!