Finished: Ladies-Who-Lunch Linen New Look Jacket

I call this my "Ladies Who Lunch" jacket. It's a little on the dainty side, with its tie at the neck and all, but I plan on grunging it up by mostly wearing it with white jeans, my staple pant of spring and summer. I like that this jacket is short but curvy and slim-fitting. I need to get away from the boxy look.

Here are the details:

• New Look 6852

• Silk and linen tweed from Paron's Annex that had an interfacing already fused to it

• Pale green silk lining, also from Paron's

• No set-in sleeves, so this can go together very quickly, but do make sure you mark your dots very carefully at the undersleeve corners. Do that and you won't have any problem with the undersleeve seam

• I added fringe from the selvage as a trim at the tie ends, the jacket front and the sleeve edges

• I thought the ties as specified were way too long, and I trimmed off about four inches on each tie end

• Very slim raglan shoulder pads from SIL Thread give the shoulders a tiny bit of definition without that shoulder-paddy look. (Shoulder pads are in again!)

• New Look's lining directions are different from any jacket I've made recently. They have you cut a lining from the same jacket pieces, then cut facing pieces (front and neck) and place them on top of the lining so all the edges line up. You turn under the facing edge and stitch that to the lining, then you make a seam of three layers: jacket, lining, facing. (Normally you'd stitch the facings to the jacket.) I thought the pattern's directions were very hard to understand once you reached the lining section.

• I have silk-covered snaps from Pacific Trimming serving as closures but snaps aren't working here. There is about a two-inch overlap at the front edges and you really need to position snaps at the edges so the front doesn't roll open. Which it does here. So I'll pick out some buttons and get buttonholes made at Jonathan's the next time I'm in the city.

• I wish I had completely bagged the lining and saved me from some hand sewing. I like hand sewing but it's painful! Can someone please recommend a thimble that isn't awkward to use? I can't seem to find one that doesn't feel uncomfortable and constricting.
  

There you have it. It's too springy a jacket to wear here yet (she writes as she looks out at the ten inches of snow covering her backyard), but I'll post some photos of me modeling it when I do.