A simple silk jacket and pants - Vogue 8089 completed

The holidays are getting nearer and I am crossing things off my "must sew, need to sew, want to sew" list. This one was a must, as the lovely Anne was flying off to Seattle for long holiday visit so I was able to finish it prior to departure. She is the one who chose all these beautiful and interesting fabrics that I have been making my way through.
The embroidered silk organza was a fabric I have never worked with before. While sewing I was imagining using this for the very full overskirt on a vintage style party dress, wouldn't that be pretty? Luckily she had already decided on something a bit more practical, although maybe only a little more!

Here is the finished jacket, it is Vogue 8089 with quite a few adjustments for fit which you can read about in the previous post . As I wrote in that post, for a very simple style it had a suprisingly large number of adjustments and I think if I were a beginner I would have been very frustrated.

In person I think this looks a lot better, you see the shimmery quality of the embroidery threads and the paisley pattern on the silk.

   

One thing I do like about this pattern is the neck band, the front pieces are cut on the straight of grain but the back neck piece is cut on the bias, so it fits nicely and hugs the neckline perfectly. Clever!

I also made pants from a matching grey silk charmeuse. Just a straight leg pull on pant with an elastic waist. The pants are pinned on my dress form, over a simple black tee shirt just to show the outfit but Anne has a purple sleeveless top she will wear over the pants and it complemented the other colors well. Looking at this photo I can see a few wrinkles. Charmeuse is maddening, sometimes I seem to accidentally press in few extra creases when I am trying to take them out. 

The pants are simple and so not much to tell about, I used this old Butterick pattern which is one of my favorites (I have made this dress maybe 4 times) made the pants full length and fully lined them with Ambiance rayon. Whenever I make pull-on or elastic waist pants I put some stitching in a contrast color in the back so I know which is which.  Kind of silly but who wants to put their clothes on backwards, no matter what age? (I even mark some of my turtlenecks...maybe this is my issue, backwards dressing.)

       
Here is a closer look at the jacket fabric. I did french seams throughout and since this fabric pressed like a dream they were very little extra work. You can really see the purple embroidery thread accent here.

Anne has an eye for fabric (as I have already documented) but she is happy to have me sew up her garments. When she came to pick up her silk outfit she brought the fantastic project that she had been working on and I had to take a photo since the color complemented this blog post so well. It is a Hawaiian style quilt for her daughter and son-in-law.  (another one of my not so great photos). The border is muted blue-grey batik. So pretty, I love Hawaiian style quilts, in fact I bought a pattern book on my last trip. Haven't made anything yet although perhaps I should start small, with a pillow :)

Happy pre-holiday mad rush sewing,  

Beth