Plaza Jacket

Here is a good feeling--finishing up a project that's been laying around in a heap for entirely too long. I mentioned one doozy of procrastination a couple posts back. It's literally been dumped in a heap at the rear of my sewing machine cabinet table top since April of 2005, and I've been just sewing around it. And it needed only a couple hours more work at the time I quit working on it.

I know--I'm pretty pathetic.

Happy to report that it's entirely completed now. It's the Plaza Jacket, made from a Sewing Workshop pattern. I bought the pattern last year at the Rosemont IQA Show, thinking how perfect it would be to make using a linen tablecloth. I've been wanting to try something like this for quite awhile, ever since I bought the book Sew Vintage by Jenny Atwood.

The tablecloth, which I suspect may have been handwoven but fit no table in my house, was among my MIL's things. It was woven in two strips in a plaid-type design. The two strips were whip-stitched together making a nearly imperceptible center seam. I was able to cut the pattern pieces to take advantage of the subtle border design.

I started this project with great enthusiasm which petered out for some reason. Don't know why--I love the jacket and it was almost finished when I abandoned it. It was a simple matter to pick it up this afternoon and complete it.

What a fun jacket, huh? Simple sewing except for the sleeve seam, which involves hitting precise points at the underarm. Managed to navigate that minefield and Ta Da! There it is.

Would this look good in cowboy fabric? I have some cowboy-print barkcloth.... It could be fun.

I'm just about completely moved into the new bookcases. It's very fun moving things around and tweaking arrangements. (I did used to be in retail display and can just get waaaay too involved in this sort of thing.) The books ended up being arranged in kind of an idiosyncratic way but it all makes sense to me. More tweaking to come, I'm sure, but it's very good to have things all together in one place. Long needed.