I am all over the place with my blogging timeline at the moment!  These pants and jacket were sewn and photographed last year – I wore this outfit on Christmas day.

Firstly, to the pattern. It’s a Lida Baday pattern, McCalls 2699, from 2000. And it’s been in my pattern stash all that time. Pity it took me twenty years to make it!

I have sewn a couple of other McCalls Lida Baday patterns in the past, and I think that there is still another one (or two) waiting for me to get around to sewing them.  It was so good sewing from an older pattern – those lovely 5/8 inch seam allowances, clear markings, and only a few sizes to distinguish between.  I think that I sewed size 12 for both the pants and jacket.

So, where will I start? Maybe with the pants.

As you can see, these are a wide-leg, elastic waisted pair of pants. They do however have some interesting features. The side seam pocket construction is a little unusual, and results in pockets that sit flat during wear and have attractive topstitched detail around the opening. There is a waist casing for elastic and a toggle – I used contrasting round elastic and a toggle that I found in stash. See, it’s handy to keep all those slightly random things for the one day when you might need them! A drawstring would aso work, or you could just insert flat elastic into the casing.

The back has a yoke, also with some topstitching. The pant hems are quite deep, which I like in a wide-leg pant. It somehow makes them feel more ‘quality’ to me. In the pattern photo the pants look cropped on the model; I shortened them a couple of inches and they’re still full length on my 158cm height!

The fabric is a textured cotton that I bought online from Super Cheap Fabrics. It’s a medium weight, so perfect for this pattern. The woven texture looks slightly different on each side, a bit like it does with a jacquard, which I took advantage of by using one side for the body of the jacket and the other side for the bands.

The bands are really a lot like external facings, as they are sewn to the wrong side of the jacket then are turned to the outside and topstitched in place. The same method is used on the sleeve hems as the jacket openings and hems. Thinking about the sleeves, I have a feeling that I shortened the sleeve pattern pieces before cutting out.

This was a relatively straightforward sew, while still needing attention to detail and especially attention to reading the instructions! There’s plenty of topstitching, and collar construction always adds a little time too. The jacket is unlined, so I took care to ensure that the overlocker thread matched the garment fabric as closely as feasible.

This outfit is a real winner for me. It’s very soft and unstructured.  Mid-weight cotton gets me through spring, summer and autumn, depending on what I wear with it. And the texture is just scrumptious! The white top is the Style Arc Ethel top, by the way, blogged here.