starting the vest

 My phone falls out of the pockets of most of my shorts.

This is irritating. 

One of the times the phone fell, the volume button assembly fell out, rendering it unusable. While there are other ways to adjust the volume, on this phone, the volume button is necessary to take a screenshot. I had to replace the phone.

This gets expensive.

I have a vest that has a pocket that will hold the phone, but the vest is wool. 

That gets hot (see the note on shorts in the first sentence, and use your imagination).

One of the coolest fabrics, reputedly, is linen. Summer suits have been made from linen for decades, maybe centuries.

So I've got this idea of making a linen vest for myself, with a pocket to hold the phone.

I looked online for vest patterns, but most of them are either for fleece vests (with too much coverage) or for vests as part of a suit, and I didn't want the pants and jacket patterns (and I didn't like the styles, anyway). What I wanted was a version of the wool vest I have, but in linen.

I did some learning about how to make a pattern from existing clothing, and drew one up. Part of a first draft:

I made up a draft from that pattern in muslin (maybe the cheapest cotton fabric, and so commonly used for this kind of test garment that the test garments themselves are called "muslins"). It didn't close across the stomach, but I used the muslin to practice the pocket insert:

After adjusting the pattern, I made another muslin to test; the one fits:

Below, the pattern pieces:

At top are the front lining pieces: one in the outer fabric, and one in the fabric that the back will be made from (common in men's vests; I'll use light cotton on the back). At bottom left, the back piece (half; it's cut on a fold and unfolds to be the full piece); at right, the front (cut two opposites).

More developments as they arise.