Houndstooth Jacket

And we have a winner...finally.

Lessons learned from previous projects applied. This is another run of Simplicity pattern 4789 (View C). I feel like Goldilocks - one jacket was too small, the other made out of scuba knit didn't press well, and this one is just right.

Since this houndstooth fabric I used had just a smidge of stretch across the grain, I went up two sizes from the one that didn't fit and this one is good. This fabric is lighter than the scuba knit I used and irons a lot better so I was able to get a good press on the seams and didn't feel the need to topstitch everything to hold things in place.

I'm happy with this one! I think I'll wear this one when I go into the office on Tuesday.

Short Jacket and Pants

One more post before I call it a weekend...

I made a short jacket (the short version of the

long jacket I made out of brocade that didn't fit

) out of scuba knit and a simple pair of elastic waist pants out of some sort of black suiting material, I think it's a wool blend.

Work clothes.

I do work from home, but on occasion I need to make appearances around people and need to be dressed appropriately. Most of the time, I am in no way dressed appropriately - as in "oh my webcam must not be working" 

because I rolled out of bed and my hair looks like Axl Rose in the Welcome to the Jungle video

. In case you're wondering, I'm wearing striped navy and white pajama pants and a long sleeved Pantera concert t-shirt. Conclusion? Not work appropriate.

Aaand that's why I'm not modeling these creations. I need to go to bed and I'm not down for hair and makeup right now. So, instead you get Penelope, the dress form I got for Christmas.

The jacket is view C from Simplicity pattern 4789 and the pants are view A but

highly

modified. I made them this afternoon per the pattern, put them on (I knew I should have done this out of muslin first) and wowzers. Talk about droopy drawers. Way wide legs and too much crotch going on in these things. My seam ripper and I got to work (of course I had serged everything except for the outside leg seams) and I pulled them completely apart and started over.

What I did to adjust them (and this is probably the super hacky way because it's Sunday and I couldn't be bothered with math and fractions) is take the original pattern piece, and laid a pair of pants that fit me better on the top of the pattern and took a pencil and traced around them. I then took my cut pieces of fabric and re-marked them with the new leg and crotch lines to slim them down.

End result is pants that fit much better. Not so wide in the legs, but a little more tapered at the ankle than I would typically wear, but I guess skinny pants are a thing so I'm just going with it. They still need to be hemmed but I'll take care of that another day.

For the jacket, I was going to leave it open but decided that it needed some sort of closure, so I attached this fun little claspy guy.

I was going to make an effort to put the pants on Penelope so you could see the complete outfit but let's be honest, it's creeping up on 10:30pm on a Sunday and ain't nobody got time for that.