Orageuse Lisboa

I'm trying really hard, really hard! to stop finding new patterns/pattern companies and jumping on a new project and wanting to make it now now now...

Orageuse has a beautiful style and I loved this immediately.  The pattern is available in English as well as in French.  There are not many blogs showing it though...I suspect lately that blogs are slowly not the thing anymore.  I notice fewer new blogs and I'm kind of sad because I'm pretty sure I learnt to sew basically from sewing blogs.

Anyway, so this here was a self-control fail.  I saw it, wanted it, bought it and made it (yay pdf patterns?)  In this beautiful piece of silk - I think it's a twill - lightweight, non-transparent, with a tiny bit of texture.  It's not slippery and it's very easy to work with.  I bought it in Frankfurt before I moved to Switzerland and have been hoarding it, except for a  small piece which I used in my Colette Chantilly bodice.  Now it's stashbusting time!

I cut a size 38, after some reflection.  I wanted to make sure it skimmed over my body and I have had some really bad experiences with cap sleeves (Georgina!) so sizing up was the best option.  I have realized that my hips seem to be somewhere different than most patterns anticipate and I think that's a big part of why my Inari was such a fail - there was bagginess where I didn't need it, but not enough room where I did...

Got some water stains on the bathroom floor, oops

Sewing was very straightforward, although I snipped a lot into the seam allowance before understitching the neck and I think that's why the front of the infernal facing wanted to pull outwards...so I subdued the beast with some fusible web.  I also tried to zig-zag the edge of the facing, but as I have mentioned the sewing machine won't sew flat zig-zags in silk and it bunched up.  I will try to pink it when I get access to pinking shears.

The method of using bias tape under the cap sleeves is the same on the Georgina...is this a French thing? 

I wanted to French seam the sides, but how to make it work with a side slit and hem?  I spent a day thinking about this and finally realized I had no idea, so I just sewed up the French seams to try and see.  I made the little slits like on the Inari - by sewing up the sides of the hem with right sides together, and then flipping it to the inside.  And yes, there is an intersection of the French seam with the hem bit which is messy, but I added a little bar tack and left it, I think it's stable enough not to matter.

Like everything, this would be perfect if it had no facings.  I'm thinking about that...
I put it on right away and thought it's just too tight on my hips!  And because of there being extra hip fabric right below my waist, there's quite a bit of swayback action.

But then I went to my friend M's shop and had a look in the full-wall mirror and realized it's actually amazing despite these things, maybe because of how the silk shifts with movement.  I'm going to keep working on this pattern - I'm super happy with it now, but I want to make a t-shirt version, I want to line it, I want to fix the hip height...