The Plaid Suit: Sewing it Together

I have slowly been making progress on my plaid suit jacket, inch by inch, trying to take my time and sew with a bit more finesse than usual. I tend to sew very quickly and I want this jacket to be nicer than my usual work, so going slow is the name of the game to avoid making any silly mistakes. I spent a few hours trying to get the pattern pieces cut out just right so most of the plaid would match up once it is sewn together. I still have to cut out the sleeves as I want to make sure to match up the thinner white portions of the plaid on those too.

I have sewn the back princess seams together and the plaid nearly matched...it's just a tiny bit off, but I have chosen to let that go! I'm doing my best here :)

The other night I realized I had no idea what I was going to do for the two front button holes causing me a bit of panic. I hadn't done nice bound button holes since that one time in freshman year of university when they made us do a practice one! So after deciding that yes, this jacket really should have bound button holes, I spent all morning practicing them today! First I made a few on muslin using two different methods, then I tried both again on scraps of the jacket wool. The first practice one is the one you see in the photo at the top of this post.

This is what the back of the two practice button holes looked like. I tried the traditional method of using just one square of fabric and then folding it over to create the "lips" of the button hole, but decided it was too bulky. Certainly not as smooth as the second method I tried which I learned from this post where you use a thin layer of silk to make the window and then two separate pieces for the "lips". Despite there being another layer of fabric involved, the result was much flatter in the end. So then I went for it and made my two buttonholes in my jacket front!

The top one is a tiny bit crooked...but again, as Elsa would sing--- Let it go!!! So I have. There will be nice sparkling black buttons over the button holes anyways, and no one will know but me (well, and you all).

And the backs of finished bound button holes with the excess fabric trimmed to graduate out for optimum smoothness. I just have to make windows in the facing and tack the facing and outside together so that the button holes remain both functional and finished from both sides.

Here is a look at the back pieces sewn together. When cutting this jacket out my main objective was to have the light grey/white-ish stripes match up as often as possible as they stand out the most. I am taking a break from sewing to write this post, but shortly I'll be sewing the fronts together and then the side seams. The side seams match up too by the way; so far this is definitely the nicest garment I have made in a long while (*knocks on all of the wood*). I don't know why I was so scared of bound button holes, they were much more straightforward than I was fearing!

Anyways, it's back to sewing for me. I hope you are all having a lovely start to the weekend!