Simplicity 2603

The last month has been a rush, going out of town for another wedding, having friends in last week (and then seeing them go, which is always sad), and going out of town again this week for 4 days of conference in San Diego. Allow me to whine: who in their right mind starts a conference during a holiday weekend (because I work for a school, I get Columbus day off)? how am I going to dress like a grown up for 4 days? I don't really have a suit, and am going to try to get by with wearing the same skirt or dress every day that I'm there. The problem boils down to a few things:

• I'd rather sew something that I wear daily, i.e., jeans, shirts, jackets.
• I'm not very good at sewing formal wear.
• I don't really have the lifestyle that calls for regular suit wearing.
• I am really hard on my clothes. I had 2 skirts until I clumsily stepped on the zipper of one of them, breaking the zipper and tearing the fabric irreparably.
  

So, when I had to go to the Canadian outdoor autumn wedding I was kicking myself for never having made a good pantsuit (this doesn't include the pant suit that I pulled out of my butt for my Defense, which still has safety pins holding the pants closed.)

Now I'll stop whining: I'm lucky that I can sew and whip up something like this the night before going out of town for an evening outdoor wedding north of the border. This was perfect, and I was warm all night. I made mine in black cotton-rayon jersey. The fabric doesn't ravel, but because I'm paranoid about knit fabric stretching out of shape, I zig zagged the edges to reinforce them, since the different arrangements call for lots of knot tying.
It's like a snuggy, but better. I'm taking it with me to the conference, you can wear it so many different ways nobody will know I'm wearing the same thing every day. I'm not sure how the picture hosting works, but I think if you click on the photos they get bigger.

Here it is, left open. Initially, I was worried that because I'm so short that the shoulders would be too wide on me and the front too long. But it seems to work.

These are two easy ways to wear it, that I especially like. You tie a little knot in the front piece and pop it over your head so that the fabric drapes in the front. It's fun to play with and whenever I've worn it I'll sometimes change it up over the course of the day.