The Lazy Suit

March 9, 2019 / 22 Comments

HI!  I told you last week that I had an event to go to and I wanted to make a jacket, wait, was it you I was talking to last week?  No, anyway, it had to be IG LOL.  Soo, I had a semi formal event to attend and I wanted to sew a jacket to go with my Style Sew Me Charita dress.  The catch was, the fabric had to be from my stash, (insert eye roll).  Who set this catch? (looks around), I guess it was me, lol.   I have some stuff in the stash that’s a few years old.  I know for some of you OG’s that’s nothing, but for me, I’m like “why haven’t you sewn this?”.  I would like to say it’s because I haven’t found the right thing, but truthfully, I just didn’t want to waste it on a wadder, but guess what, it’s a lot of fabric out there and I needed to get past that.

I originally wanted a blazer out of this and if I ever come across something like this, I will definitely get more.  I made the February’s Sew your view and this is my unofficial, not really suit.  I know technically this outfit is not a “suit” but it’s my blog and I’ll call it what I want, OK?  LOL…  I rarely buy enough fabric for a suit, because I never really payed attention to yardage in the past (insert quadruple eye roll).  I either get too little (a one yard remnant) or too much, 5 yards of foolishness.  Sigh, anyway, I made this jacket from this flocked fabric because the pattern called for something mid weight, I only have two pieces of Boucle and I wasn’t ready to use them yet.  I had a few bottom weights, but I wanted those for pants.  Ugh, I can’t with me, so I used this fabric.

The jacket is McCalls 7912 and I made view A in a mid weight flocked fabric.  I like the shawl collar on this with the belt.   I had to lengthen the front and back above the waist 1.5″,  I cut size XL at the shoulder and grade out to XXL to the hem.  I also did butt adjustment adding an additional one inch to the hip. The sleeves are huge so I cut the XL sleeve.  Finally, I did my normal forward shoulder adjustment and I adjusted the shoulder slope.   I’m not a fan of drop shoulders, my forward and slope shoulders look best in a set in sleeve, raglan and drop are not the greatest on me, but it will work.  I gave this a try because I like the collar.  Not sure if I’ll sew this again, but I did like it and would recommend it.

For the pants, last minute, I thought the jacket would nice with velvet wide legged pants.  OMG, really!! I just felt the dress would look better with a different topper.   If you follow me on Instagram, you saw in my stories last week that I was adjusting a pair of Burda pants, Burda 6952 in velvet.  I read somewhere that Burda had a good crotch curve, not too straight so I wanted to try a pair.  Well, I think I have a good pull on pants pattern now!  I think these pants will go well with woven, stretch woven or stable knits with a little stretch.  The velvet had about 25% stretch across the selvedge so I added 1/4″ to the side seams and inseam seam allowance (updated seam allowance was a little over 3/4″) to compensate for the stretch.  This is why I call this suit the lazy suit, because pull on pants and a jacket with no closures is as easy (lazy) as it gets.  I’m good with lazy!

I did my normal pants adjustments which I’m now proud to have figured out!  I did a knock knee adjustment, I added three inches to the back rise, I took a one inch wedge out of center back from the waist grading to nothing at the crotch, I added half that back to the side seam (1/2 inch).   I straightened out the inseam curve from the extension to right above the knee and I added to the front side seam from low hip to mid thigh.  I find for me, adding to the side seam is better for a large thigh adjustment than to the inseam,  I have saddle bags so the width on the sides is better for me.  I  did add about 1/4″ to the front inseam.    These are already long so I didn’t lengthen them and I didn’t scoop the crotch curve!  Note:  these adjustments can be found in Fast Fit for Sandra Betzina.  Not so normal adjustments, I added 1.5″ to the back hem at the side seam and 1.5″ to the inseam for a total of 3″, I graded to nothing at knee, effectively making a slight bell bottom.  For the front hem, I only added 1″ to each side of the leg for a total of two inches in front, grading to nothing at the knee.

Here’s a tutorial similar to what I did for the bell bottom:

Photo Credit:  Learn to Sew with Rasa

What do you think of my lazy suit!?  I think I look cute and the velvet feels appropriate and a good complement to the flocked jacket.

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