Wool Jacket McCall's 6441 and Vintage Skirt

For the past few seasons there has been increased use of textured, woollen fabrics tailored into feminine shapes on the catwalks. Dolce & Gabbana showed some double breasted jackets with nipped in waists. Nina Ricci showed some zip fronted jackets with matching skirts in mixed, textured fabrics.

Here is one of my recent projects, the navy fabric is a stretch wool purchased from C&H Fabrics. Both the jacket and skirt are lined with a super stretchy black mesh fabric from Fabricland. The lining improves the drape and makes the garments more comfortable to wear as they don't 'grip' whatever one is wearing underneath. Also some wool fabrics can be terribly itchy to wear, and the layer provides extra warmth which, for me, is always welcome.

As a suit, I think it should be styled with killer heels to stop it looking frumpy.

For the jacket I used the McCall's 6411, the fit is shown as quite loose on the envelope but judging from the line drawing on the back I knew it would be simple to tailor into more fitted version. I didn't use interfacing as the pattern suggests as I wanted to retain the stretch and keep it reasonably soft. It was simple to make, the most time consuming part was marking and taking in the extra fabric on the jacket and then marking the same measurement on the lining. 

The skirt is based on this old (over 20 years) pencil skirt pattern, I used this pattern so many times now, just changing the length. The skirt sits on the waist, some would say it was high waisted, and has a vent at the back and fastens with a concealed zip. I made mine longer than the pattern, falling below the knee. In order to reinforce the waistband and stop it from stretching I used a wide webbing tape. The waistband part of the pattern went missing a long time ago so I measure each time and cut a new one 13cm wide. I put the concealed zipper in after the waistband was attached, and run it up to the top, using no other fastenings - I find it too bulky making an overlap, it would be especially bulky in this thick fabric I used.

The idea was that the jacket could also be worn casually with jeans, and as a top layer over skirts of different colours and textures.

I think the heavy duty zip gives the jacket a more modern feel.

Neither the wool fabric or the lining frayed making hemming and general working with the fabrics much easier.

I would make the jacket again, originally I was thinking about using boucle, however I'd read about some of difficulties of working with boucle and decided, at least initially to make the jacket in an easier fabric.