Last week I mentioned a few projects I’d been working on, including a little satin jacket to wear with both my purple Matthew Willamson birthday dress and my swirl sheath dress. Well, the Welsh wedding was over the weekend and we managed to squeeze in some photos in the hotel room before the big bash so you all can see how it coordinates with the Matthew Williamson sheath!
As I mentioned before, the pattern is the same Cynthia Rowley Simplicity pattern I used for my fuschia party dress – a simple, loose, open jacket with dropped shoulders and wide sleeves.
I didn’t have enough of either satin to make the entire jacket in one colour so I decided to colourblock it. Since there weren’t many seams in the jacket itself, I just drew some extra seamlines onto the pattern pieces for my colourblocking.
The sleeves are drop-shoulder but also with a really low armscye at about the waist, and cropped to mid-forearm. I cannot believe there was freaking EASE in the sleeve cap of a dropped shoulder! There really isn’t any need to have sleeve cap ease full stop but in a drop shoulder it’s particularly stupid!
It’s also unlined, so I sewed it all with french seams and neat finish facings (where you sew the facing to the interfacing, then flip it around to fuse). It’s debatable whether just drafting a lining would’ve taken up more time!
Surprisingly, it was just enough to keep my arms warm between the run to the coach and from the coach to the wedding pub (built in 1573 – the oldest pub in Wales!), and the cropped sleeves looked great with my short leather gloves, too.
I’m thinking about wearing my swirl sheath dress to a 100th birthday party in a few weeks so I’ll try and get some photos of the jacket paired with that dress, too!