Felting a Vest For a Man

Hand-felted Vest for a Gardener

There is a famous gardener in Hungary who calls himself The Gardener with the Hat. His company is called Barackvirág LLC, which cannot be translated directly. It would be something like Peach Blossom LLC or Apricot Blossom LLC. In Hungarian, barack can mean both, until you put a specific word in front of it to make clear whether it is apricot or peach. Apricots (Prunus armeniaca) and peaches (Prunus persica) are closely related stone fruits of the genus Prunus. So let’s just say Prunus Blossom LLC.

We knew each other only casually, and that was all I knew about him when he ordered a felt vest from me, which he wanted to wear for representational purposes whenever he appeared on television, at a gardening show, or wherever else.

He had not even seen my felt pictures, and to this day I do not know how he came up with the idea of ordering a vest from me. It did not help me either, feeling my way in the dark and simply hoping that he would like the result.

After asking a few questions, I made a decision about what I would enjoy making, and then we just had to hope for the best… These were the clues:

Prunus Blossom LLC
his company logo and the design of his website
the guy rides a motorcycle
base color: green

1. Wool Layout for Felting the Vest

After making two felt samples, I decided on this layout in order to get a flexible, yet warm vest that would not be thick: roving in herringbone layout technique (hand-dyed, for the inside), one layer of gauze, industrial prefelt from the German wool supplier Wollknoll (outside).

On the front and back I laid out the bloomy pattern from all kinds of prefelt scraps, fibers, yarns and loose wool, spontaneously, just as it came to me.

On the back, I added the words Flos Persicae, which in Latin means Prunus blossom, and its placement evokes “Hell’s Angels” — well, if he is a biker.

The typography, too, belongs to old Latin texts, because a few months earlier I had seen an exhibition in the most famous monastery in Hungary, where a monk-gardener had kept a gardening diary every single day in the 19th century, with utterly charming entries. That came back to me while I was laying out the pattern.

So I had improvised over the vest. The only thing I knew in advance was this: I wanted red coneflowers, bees, and Prunus blossoms on it.

This is what the back looked like already felted:

2. Felted vest pocket and reinforcements

With or without vest pocket(s)? You do need somewhere to tuck away a handkerchief… well, alright then, a little pocket too.

The brown rectangles reinforce the future closure area and, like the cornflower and fantasy fern leaves, they are made from hand-dyed prefelt.

You can also see a vertically placed strip of prefelt in the middle, which is meant to reinforce the future cut edges. (I used this kind of edge reinforcement along all later cut edges. I can highly recommend it if you want to avoid getting floppy edges.)

Cutting or fold lines can be marked beautifully in the damp prefelt with a narrow piece of soap. You can also keep correcting them before cutting, which was helpful here while planning the collar.

After felting, the pattern naturally becomes a little less distinct:

3. Buttons and Free-Motion Machine Embroidery on the Felt

From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to scribble on it with the sewing machine after felting, because I simply loooove the result. Loose, just like that, as if with a pen… that’s when truly wonderful details begin to appear.

And what kind of buttons? Wood? Felt? Metal? *ponder, ponder*
– Why not make Prunus-stone buttons? – said the family.
– Yeppp! Brilliant, thank you! …so I set to work on a few peach stones with a grinding machine and a drill… (Helloooo, nobody’s paying you for that anymore… yes, but it’s fun, and the gag simply has to be there…)

Of course, you don’t necessarily have peach stones lying around at home in winter, but since my son once spent quite a while carving fruit stones, there were still a few left.

This was the result — my fantasy garden. I deliberately left the lettering without an outline; that would have been too much.

The vest then fit him like a glove. He took it with him and I had no idea whether he really liked it or not… That was in January.

A week ago he called me and told me how passionately he loves the vest and that people keep asking him about it. Not long ago he even gave his lecture in it at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He just mustn’t gain any weight… He was stunned when he first saw the piece, because he had never imagined it could be such a thin, fine thing; he had expected something much coarser. He was especially pleased about the few Prunus blossoms I felted onto the inside, and since the seam appears there too, he also has a few blossom outlines on the inside. Besides, he is amazed that it really does keep him warm, even though it is thin.

I should start preparing myself to felt a matching jacket… well, alright, if it absolutely has to be.

(By the way the guy is over 180 cm/71 inches tall. The vest might look smaller on the pics above.)

I am still waiting for a photo of him at the Academy… I found the following picture by chance on the internet — and cut it out of the Shorts video, so accordingly it is also pixelated — where he is right in action: