2 Pant Jacket

This refashion is another from my 5-patterns-by-tax-day challenge. The original garment was Anne Taylor twill capri pants. They were leftover from a friend's yardsale, so I don 't know their history (how old, etc).

BEFORE:

Sorry if you were hoping that I'd model them, I could lie and say that they didn't fit but the real reason is that my worst nightmare is having a picture of myself in tapered pants posted to the internet. But they were worth saving, I couldn't resist the print!

I took the time to rip out the seams (took forever but I needed to preserve as much fabric as possible so I had to save the salvages, otherwise I would have just cut them apart). Here's a rough sketch of how I cut the jacket pieces from the pants (in reality the pattern pieces were right up to each edge):

There still wasn't enough fabric for a stream-lined version of the longer jacket from Simplicity 2652, so I found a second pair of twill capri pants in black (50-cent bin of course). The pattern has a neck band that I did in the contrast fabric, and then I added contrast strips to the bottom and middle front to make each panel the size of the pattern. I was hoping to add contrast to the sleeves but there wasn't enough fabric left from the second pair of pants.

AFTER:

The jacket comes out very boxy, as you can see from the back:

I think the sleeves are adding to the boxiness, but I had to do a shortened version of the long sleeve option because the gathered sleeve options were too wide to come out of the bottom of the tapered capri pants.

I was apprehensive about using a "Project Runway" branded pattern (I'm a huge fan of the show, and not a fan of patterns/pattern companies) and I wouldn't give the pattern more than 3 out of 5 stars, but the jacket is still cute in the front. In defense of the Project Runway patterns, they do treat elements separately so that the sewist isn't intimidated to swap the sleeves from one view to go with the collar from another, etc. I wish more patterns treated the user as an intelligent creature, capable of making design decisions.

I'm considering adding buttons to this (currently it has the hook and eye from the original pants) but it isn't giving a sturdy enough fasten... I also think I might shorten the sleeves a bit more? What do ya'll think?