Simplicity 4727 (1943): Part I

So . . . I failed again on the housecoat-sewing front.

I've had this red, white, and blue plaid fabric for a couple of years and have meant, two or three times over, to use it to make myself a sundress for the Fourth of July.  This is sort of a dual-purpose sundress: It's a holiday, and it's also my birthday.  Ironically, the Fourth is one of my least favorite holidays: I hate hot weather, it's a terrible day for kids' birthdays because everyone has family plans, and there are too many drunk drivers.  My maternal grandmother's birthday was on Hallowe'en.  I would so much rather have had that birthday!

Anyway--this is sort of patriotic but also sort of subtle.  It's red, white, and blue but there aren't any flags or stars or anything, so I could wear it the rest of the year, as well.

Nothing fancy; got it at Hobby Lobby.  If you like it, they still have some, but it's a no-name non-brand.  It's not bad fabric, though.

This year, I decided that, even though, once again, I couldn't get it done for my birthday, one of my gifts to myself was going to be that I could work on it on the occasion of my birthday.

I picked Simplicity 4727 (1943), because it's a simple pattern that won't compete with a rather loud plaid, and because it has that freakin' adorable bolero.  I also need the skirt pattern and I figured this would give me the opportunity to resize it for later use.

The bolero will be navy blue with plaid revers, and I found these amazing buttons to decorate it:

I went through several badly-Photoshopped concepts but finally decided I really needed to add contrast cuffs to the jacket, and settled on this one: