Two Vogue patterns - 9114 and 9153

The blouse is Vogue 9153 - a Marcy Tilton pattern.
The bottom is Vogue 9114 - a Kathryn Brenne pattern.

Both patterns have a "gathered area" on them that is out of the norm.  The blouse has a gathered section on the right hand side and the pants have gathered panels near the knees.

A little out of my comfort zone here by making something so baggy.  The blouse is fitted thru the shoulders and bust - which I like - and from the there on down, it is quite baggy.  I made a size XS and it was still very roomy.  The arms were a little snug for me so I ended up letting them out 1/4" from the armhole to the hemline.  

Here is the blouse on the dress form.  The front pieces are supposed to have separate facings sewn to them.  Instead, I altered the pattern to include the facings.  This made it much easier to match the plaid lines on the center front.

The gathered section on the right hand side sorta looks like a pocket, but it's not.  I wanted to highlight this area so I used the contrasting green from the pants as an accent piece.  Also - I added a buttonhole to the top plaid layer for the button.  The pattern only calls for a buttonhole on the bottom layer (the green layer), but this caused the top plaid layer to fold over and I thought it looked odd, so I added the extra buttonhole.

And can you believe I had these buttons in my stash that are the perfect match!  I purchased these buttons at a quilt shop in Montreal a few years ago.  I believe the shop has now closed but I paid $21.00 Canadian form them at the time.  Who knew they would later match this piece of cotton plaid purchased from the Robert Talbott outlet in Carmel, CA that was in my stash.

 Back view here.  You can see how it is nicely fitted thru the shoulder and armhole area.  

The sleeves have a cuff that I opted to use the contrasting green fabric on to highlight them.

The left side of the blouse has two darts that are sewn on the outside of the blouse.  To me, this looks like a mistake, but I'll go with the flow for awhile.  I may change this later so the darts are on the inside if it ends up bugging me too much.

Looks kinda cute here!

One day, I will figure out how to take a straight photo from the back.....

For the pants, I did make a practice pair out of some black linen I had in the stash.  I discovered two things with the practice pair.
First - I couldn't figure out how to tie just the one tie that is called for in the pattern so I opted for two ties on the green pair.
Second - I didn't like the way the small casing is sewn in the pattern because the raw edge ended up poking thru on my practice pair so I've made a simple tutorial below.
Oh - and I shortened the waist by 1 inch and the length by 1 inch too.

Simple tutorial for finishing the casing edge on the inset piece near the knee:
Here are pattern piece #7 (the facing - the plaid piece) and # (the inset - the green piece), sewn together, trimmed and topstitched.

On the straight side of the pieces, there are two small notches - kinda hard to see in this photo.

Sew a staystitching line 1/2" before and after the notch marking and then clip to the staystitching line.

Turn this small piece in twice, using the staystitching line as a guide for the finished edge and sew in place.

Next, with right sides together, sew the rest of the side seam, clip, press and turn.

And voila!  You have a nicely finished little edge so when the drawstrings are threaded thru the casing and pulled, the raw edge of the fabric doesn't slip thru to the outside.

Here's the bottom of the pants with two drawstrings in the panel.  Now I can pull them both and tie a bow.

So how are my yearly stashbustin stats coming along?  The blue plaid was from the stash but I purchased the green fabric to match it so I'm not going to include it in my total; however, the black practice pair of pants was fabric from the stash so it's going into the total!

Top = 2.75 yards
Bottoms = 2.375 yards
YTD yardage sewn:38.25 yards!

Happy sewing everyone!
Star