Another one moves up to the closet

In April I had a wedding to go to.  Good reason to sew an outfit.  Had to be quick, because I was making the wedding cake, and that would take up time.  The dress was no problem.  I had made it before in various incarnations.  It was sleeveless and needed a jacket. 

I had picked up this KwikSew 3535 a while back, and it seemed to fit the bill.  Super simple.  No buttonholes.  No linings.  No fuss.  I knew that I would have to futz with the fit, but even that wouldn't be such a problem.  Well, it wasn't, except that I always manage to bite off more than I can chew, and the night before the wedding I still had "a few things" to finish on the jacket.  At 2 in the morning I had just put the last cake tier in the fridge, and I had to make a decision - sleep or jacket.  Sleep won out.  I did have another silk jacket that worked with the dress, and at least I had one new piece to wear.  Since I had no deadline anymore, the poor jacket languished in the sewing room right through the summer.  I finally finished the sewing.
 

The obstacle that seemed to stump me was the satin stitching around the facing.  (The facings are turned to the outside, then stitched down.)  I was worried about tunneling.  After many samples I finally decided on running heat-away stabilizer under the fabric as I was stitching - I wanted to be sure that no traces of stabilizer remained once I finished.  All worked well.  Then I read the directions for removing the excess stabilizer, which said to set the iron at cotton or linen.  Yikes!  Press cloth or not, I was just not willing to put the silk to such a test.  That particular stabilizer is a rather coarse woven, and I ended up pulling out all visible threads with tweezers - all around the jacket, and all around the sleeve hems.  Rather an arduous task, but - I was happy that I wouldn't do any potential damage to the silk, and nothing visible remained.  So this jacket has finally gone to live in the closet to await an event for which it will be appropriate.

The fabric is silk doupionni in what I call a toasted apricot colour.   (It was leftovers from somebody's bridesmaid dresses and had to be cut out of odd-shaped pieces.)  On the inside I serged the seam edges, then turned under the serging and stitched the edge down.  Well, only in the body of the jacket.  Nobody has any business peering up my sleeves to see how the edges are finished.  I also wrapped the armscye seam in self-bias.  The satin stitching is done in a variegated rayon embroidery thread, though I opted for a plain rayon thread in the bobbin. 

The front has darts, the back has some interesting-looking princess seams.

Look!  Even made tiny little ball buttons and loops!

And here it all is as the outfit that should have been.  

The dress is Vogue 8413, View A.

Writing in the middle of the day is SO MUCH easier than trying to do this at strange hours of the night!