Vogue 1071 Refashion

It all started with the salesman's question, "What are you going to wear with that?" I had worked a couple of short stints in retail during college, so I could recognize the (soft) upsell. I used to do the same thing. But, though I can afford to buy nice clothes once in a while, I can't afford to dress in head to toe Issey Miyake.

Check out the texture on this Cauliflower jacket.

I remembered that I had some gray handkerchief linen in a similar color. It also works well with white, navy or black bottoms like the skirt shown below.  Serendipitously, I found this men's silk shirt at my neighborhood Goodwill. I like the contrast of matte and shiny, crinkled and smooth.

I used this out of print (OOP) Calvin Klein pattern from 1993.

It buttons up the back, and my "material" already had buttons and buttonholes!

So I cut the blouse back from the old shirt front,

and the blouse front from the shirt back,

and added bias bindings, cut from one sleeve, to the neck and arm openings.

It was a quick and gratifying project. The only pattern change I made was to deepen the front neck by 1/2" so it didn't feel like it was choking me.  There was no buttonhole at the top of the blouse (which was the bottom hem of the shirt), so I used a snap there.

Because of the width of the cut-on cap sleeves, the only way I could fit the back pattern pieces was to turn it upside down.  The pocket is not functional, but I left it on anyway. 

I wore it to work on Wednesday with the jacket.

Addendum:
I made another matching blouse with the gray handkerchief linen in Handmade Homemade (Vogue 8392).