Brown blue cashmere suit: stashbusting really works!

As hard as it may be to believe it, this three piece outfit, completed at last, marks the end of a four year saga.  It began in New York in Jan of 2010, when I got tempted by a dark brown, shot with blue and golden brown threads, cashmere wool woven.

The pic above gives the best sense of the fabric: very soft, very dark brown and yet not only brown; the bright blue and golden highlights are very clear in close-up. In the pic, the jacket is paired with the brown silk jaquard top I just made. Unquestionably this cashmere is the most expensive piece of fabric I ever sprang for. Lightweight, soft as down, springy, yum!  I think it came from Beckenstein's - I recall my sister in law took me for a long day's trawl through the fashion district and this was one of our last stops, a fabric store dominated by menswear cloths of the highest quality.  Sound familiar?  I believe it should.

I got the fabric with only a jacket in mind, but the cut was so wonderfully generous (2.2 meters) that after the collarless V7975 jacket was cut, the remainder yielded a sleeveless two piece dress made up of a princess-seamed top (Go 4001) and simple pegged skirt (Burda 9-2008-120). I finished the top fairly promptly, then continued apace with the jacket.  All of a sudden, with everything cut and mostly sewed together, the project got stalled by this, that and t'other.  Mostly two snags:  I resisted the idea of cutting buttonholes into this scrumptious fabric but wasn't sure how to proceed; and I was't entirely at all thrilled with the shape of the skirt.

Still, we all  know the UFO refrain:  unfinished is unstarted, and merely cut out is money thrown out.  I finally tackled the bull cashmere billy goat by the horns and, tadaaa! at last can call the top, jacket and skirt, and therefore the entire three piece outfit, completed at last.  At very long last, indeed!

So, without further ado: all on the dress form, because, well, Baby, It's Cold Outside.

Jacket:  Vogue 7975, size 10 straight up, lined with chocolate brown silk jacquard (the Marfy 1913 chocolate brown top I made last week was eked out of the last little remnant of the very same silk).  It's a closer, better fit than the red boucle jacket, which was a size 12.

Instead of buttonholes, I sewed on three snaps and covered the right side ones with deep blue "tweedy" buttons.

I stabilized the fabric - all 2.2 meters of it - with lightweight fusible knit.  I can hardly believe I had the patience to do that, but yes, to my amazement.... The jacket is further padded with a chest and upper back shield, sleeve heads, and shoulder pads.  I was going to forego the pads, but realized late in the finishing that lack of them would give the jacket unsightly drag lines between armscye and waist, so in they went.

The top is based on the bodice to hip line Go 4001 sleeveless dress. I love its strong side princess line, it's perfect for anyone with nice sized assets on top. I made the dress back in 2009; for those of you not party to Sewing Review, the pictorial set starts here.

 This top is also lined with the same brown silk jacquard. Easy peasy. Nothing more to add.

The Awful Skirt:  Burda 9-2008-120 simple pegged aka "tulip shape" skirt. IMO this skirt has a very strange shape, with a really strong pooch line at the hip, I suspect mainly due to the tulip shape, though some of that may be the fault of my drawing the pattern to match the dimensions of my generous derriere/small waist figure.  I tried to slim it down but it seemed to me I was only making matters worse, worser, and worsest, so finally gave up on alterations, returned to the pattern's original truly weird line, and decided to finish it with much more ease in the hips than I would ordinarily. Lined with a heavy 80% bemberg/20% polyester blend lining in very dark navy, it works, but is far from ideal. Embarrassed, much?  Oh yeah, very. C'mon, how hard can it be to get a simple no waistband skirt to look decent, for pity's sake?  It hangs off my hips just fine, but then goes all "I wanna be a jodhpur" a few inches further down.

What's really funny is that a gal showed up in just such trousers to this week's group photocall of 2014 Oscar nominees:

Dressed to impress: Gravity's Sandra Bullock and American Hustle's Amy Adams posed with director/writer Alfonso Cuarón, singer Karen O and actor Leonardo DiCaprio among others in the line-up (Daily Mail credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2556576/OSCARS-2014-NOMINEES-Full-line-pose-group-shot-pre-awards-luncheon.html#ixzz2t45RHkzs )

Though it's now finished, I still aim to sneak up on it with a bit of needle and thread to oh so gently, millimeter by millimeter, tamp down some of this skirt's dressage ambitions. Sheesh. The bottom line (pun intended!) is that my hip line would do better with a different pattern.  I'll most emphatically never, not ever but ever, use this pattern again.  Basta!

But wait, perhaps NOT Basta!  With a little research under my belt today, I discovered that there really is a trick to making a good looking pencil skirt.  Take a look at the detailed skirt sloper workup, nicely demo'd for the rest of us by the Overflowing Stash. This is almost tempting me to rip the skirt apart again, and re-sew it a third time.  Maybe. It'd be a pity to let an otherwise nice outfit, and such a luxurious one at that,  languish unloved in the closet.  Especially as I'd been a busy little bee making, and continuing to make, go-with tops:

Both the cashmere top and the brown silk jacquard top coordinate beautifully with these two scarves:

The green python blouse also works with the brown; its deep blues and oranges play well with the blue and golden threads of the jacket: 

And I have three more potential playmates in the pipeline:  two nice polys and a silk crinkle chiffon.  Just draped onto the form, and feeling hopeful about them:

Poly satin

Lightweight poly crepe

Crinkle silk chiffon

As a concluding remark, I'm happy to say that the stashbusting challenge prompted me to finally buckle down and finish this set, already.  I'm thrilled to bits - the jacket is scrumptious, and a good excuse for some fun and easy blouse-making time.  But, how do I count this set for stashbusting?  The sleeveless top was completed some time ago, but without its partners, it would never have been worn. In fact, though already finished, it was still languishing in the sewing pile along with the rest of its set, an abandoned orphan if ever I saw one. So, 2.2 meters of fabric, 1.8 meters of silk?  Done!

Chocolate love: full version of Marfy 1913

For my second, full-on version of this pattern, I used a remnant of a very dark chocolate brown silk jacquard.

The fabric is beautiful, with a fine zigzag giving it texture and a lovely glow: 

I fiddled with the colour to render it as close to its true shade as I could. 

 The fabric was too narrow to lay the pattern pieces side by side, but there was just enough to lay out them down in opposite directions, possible here as the fabric has a non-directional pattern.

I added a tiny bit of width at the neckline to increase the pleating fullness there. Just because. 

The back opening is faced and finished with a thread chain loop and self-covered button:

I'm surprised by how much the back opening seems to gape open.  The neck band isn't tight.  

I used this opportunity to apply two basic techniques I haven't yet had the opportunity to use:  a self-faced opening treatment (this top has no CB seam), and the self-covered button (yawn, right?).  To make the facing, I made a long skinny rectangle, and sewed it to right side of CB as a long skinny dart, turned to the inside and topstitched.  

Inside view.  Nice, no raw edges finish.

Looking at the outside, I learn a lesson: in order to avoid those corner impressions at the bottom of the opening, give the self facing strip a smoothly rounded curve down there.  Next time, for sure.

Very imperfect:  I'm glad this top is very dark - those facing bumps at the bottom of the openings are invisible in the wearing. 

Based on the floral blue top, I raised the armscye by 1 cm, and it came out a touch tight. Still wearable and not uncomfortable, but noticeable. I attribute this to differences in the fabric:  the crepe is flexible and springy, and I may have stretched the armscye a bit during binding.  On the other hand, this jacquard has all the stretch of a stone bench. Seriously.  It's so rock-solid stable that even bias has only minimal stretch.  I'll have to take fabric characteristics into account more thoughtfully in future.    

I do like this top's high neckline, it works well with my long neck and will suit both collared and collarless jackets.  Though I won't wear it with the rainbow jacket (the colours don't agree), the style, in navy or purple or even red, will be good. 

I love how blue and brown go together.  My mostly-blue keyhole scarf will marry this brown top with the blue jacket:

Now a bit about chocolate, or xocolatl:

In this Mayan painting, the girl at left is holding a hot chocolate drink.

Did you know the cacao bean has been cultivated for about three thousand years?  Hot chocolate is as old as the Mayan civilization. The Maya also sprinkled it on their food like a condiment (think ground parmesan cheese).  Mayan people of Central America still use the traditional methods in demonstrations of the ancient process:

The cacao pod is at lower left; the woman is using a basalt metate (mortar and pestles) to grind the cacao beans (nibs). 

Can you believe the size of the cacao pod!  The cacao beans grow within a fleshy matrix inside. 

Cacao pods feature prominently in Mayan and Aztec art: 

Cacao pods as garment. 

 The Aztecs made their chocolate drink spicy with chili peppers. Yikes!

Hot chocolate appeared in England around 1640:  more than 350 years ago!

Chocolate is not only very good for us, but it also makes snails smarter.  Who knew?!