Made by a Fabricista: Merry and Bright!

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah or joyful Kwanza or just a wonderful Wednesday. We hosted Christmas dinner and spent the day with family and friends. Thankfully my husband did the most of the cooking so I just did the decorating and cleaning! On to this outfit...

I love bright colors, especially during the dreary winter months! When I saw this bright chartreuse suiting I had a thought for a suit or a coat dress. Then I spotted this animal print blouse fabric in leopard and fell in love. The animal print fabric is a 100% Polyester Animal Print Blouse Weight Woven from a Famous Dress Designer. It is currently sold out, but it is one of Fabric Mart's re-orderable fabrics. Which means it should be restocked soon! Keep checking back. It's SKU is UZC7299r.

Although I really wanted to sew the recently released M7997, I decided to go with a suit and blouse. I selected Butterick 6523 because liked the simplicity of the blazer, it's unlined with no closures. Initially I was thinking wide leg pants, but decided to sew the coordinating pants because, well... they were designed to go together. Simplicity 8789 is a bodysuit pattern I grabbed a while back and this fabric is perfect for it. I love a bodysuit for layering, especially a blousy one.

I love that this suiting by Milly has a great stretch (20% horizontally and 30% vertically) as I find a little stretch makes everything more comfortable to wear. Unfortunately this chartreuse is sold out, but they have 6 other colors available, including a similar highlighter green. There are also several other stretch suiting available as well. This Milly fabric sews up beautifully! The weight is listed as light/medium, but I'd call it medium. The hand is smooth and soft. The only issue was it did seem to shed quite a bit.

Since the jacket is unlined I decided to take the extra step to bias bind the seams, facing and hems for a more professional look. The raw edges of the pants are just serged, but look at that serge!

Some may find a chartreuse suit a bit much and I'll admit it is, but I love it and I think it works well together. Surprisingly I feel I can switch this up a few different ways. Chartreuse goes well with gray (as seen here), navy, teal, white and black.

This animal print fabric is a near perfect match and I love it! I love bodysuits, they always stay tucked in. This blouse weight woven has the perfect drape for this wrap front bodysuit. Though this fabric is lighter weight it isn't slippery or shifty and was easy to sew. However I did notice the fabric would snag when pinning. I just made sure to use my sharpest, newest pins and I didn't have a problem. I haven't decided what to do about the sleeves, here they are just flowing. My plan was to do the cuffs (view d), but I couldn't find buttons that I liked so I figured I'd do the elastic hem (view C). Now that I see the flowy-ness of the flared sleeve, I'm really liking it, so I may just do a narrow hem.

I'm so pleased with my look and that I put the bright in Merry and Bright!

Happy New Year! See you next year!

Tiffany

TipStitched.com

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