Mum’s Sheepskin Vest (and the change of plans)

Many years ago, my mother was given a sheepskin vest by a family friend.

I remember Mum wearing it on camping trips when I was a child, although she doesn’t recall this. An exhaustive search through the family photo archive to back up my claim failed to bring up a single image. So who knows?

The vest was high-hip length, of soft buttery brown suede on the outside and short sheepskin on the inside. It had brown binding around the neck and armholes, and (?) did up with toggles (not sure about that).

At some point, Mum unpicked the vest as it was too big, but didn’t go any further. The pieces sat in a box (along with curtain offcuts and other textiles) for a couple of decades until Mum moved house and the box was passed onto me.

I rediscovered them when I had a big tidy up in 2021. The sheepskin had yellowed but the leather was still soft and supple.

I’m fairly certain Mum saved the binding as well, but I can’t find it. It was dark brown and sort of like thin leather (?).

I considered how to go about sewing the pieces back together – by machine or hand? It’s possible to machine stitch leather in existing holes, but I’ve never tried it. Instead I handstitched it using the original holes, and it went much faster than I thought.

I kicked myself I didn’t organise any sturdy brown thread to do the stitching, and it was already past noon on a Saturday and all the shops were shut. However, I had some perfectly matching regular thread, and used a double strand of that.

The seams are lapped seams, with two rows of stitching. I simply did running stitch and it worked fine.

I didn’t replace the binding – you can see the holes around the edges where it was. I wonder how much the edges will stretch without it, if at all?

When I tried the vest on, the fit was good. Me at middle age is bigger than Mum in her 30s!

So….the plan was to sew the vest back together and use it as a button-in lining in my coat to make it warmer on very cold days.

My everyday coat is the belted “coat that makes me look like a Jedi”, and I gave the vest a trial run underneath it before committing.

It didn’t work well. The belt bunched up the sheepskin around my waist into pleats, and it felt too bulky and hard to move in. Also, the armholes were a bit high.

However, maybe with the right kind of coat (ie non-belted) it will work better.

There’s no hurry as I don’t expect to wear this often (this is Australia, y’know). So I’ll keep it for now as a vest to wear on its own, or try out on a different style of coat later.

Cheers!