I made the lots of bias strips out of an ugly cotton fabric I had and then laid them out on the template I had made on freezer paper from Garment Designer. There were no seams or darts except at
the shoulder. After marking the grid on the paper with pencil, I placed the strips on the freezer paper template and ironed them in place.
Then, after cutting a front and back facings about 2 inches wide to coincide with the edges of the vest template, I sewed these together. Before applying the front and back facing of the edges of the vest to the bias strips, I sewed the edges of the strips all around (where the facings would go) to the freezer paper to give it some stability. I
made small machine made bartacks at each intersection of the strips using a dark slightly glittery thread. I then removed most of the
freezer paper around the edges and sewed the facings to the garment. I had finished off the shoulder seams by covering the seams with bias
strips on the inside and outside and tucked the edges under the facings. The appliques are made with denim using both sides of the denim in the leaf designs. The thread in the appique and veining on the leaves matched the bartacks. The ugly fabric wasn’t so ugly after all
that.