Vogue 2973 Jacket - finished!

My excitement at finally finishing the jacket has been somewhat marred by the fact that I just dropped the digital camera on the floor and have broken the screen. It seems to still function (i.e. it can take pictures, you just can't see them) so I will see if it can be repaired. So here are possibly the last shots taken by this camera;
Actually when I say it's finished I mean it is finished as far as it can be. The collar band is supposed to be topstitched as well, but my fabric is quite thick and there is no way I can get this part under the foot of my machine without really forcing it which makes for extremely bad topstitching (trust me, if I have to unpick any more topstitching I will go nuts). With the benefit of hindsight (in addition to not dropping the camera) I would have marked the seamlines of each collar piece and done the topstitching before stitching the pieces together. Do you think it is OK to leave the jacket like this? I don't have much choice, but maybe I can take it in to my alterations place and see if they can do it with their industrial machines if it looks really odd.

Apart from the topstitching this pattern is not too difficult. I love the design of it, the seaming and the zip detail on the sleeves. I sewed part of the collar in by hand as it was much easier to control it that way and make sure that the lapel, collarband and top collar all met at the same point. It's funny I used to think that the goal was to sew as much as possible by machine like Ready to Wear and that handsewing was somehow cheating, but if you can get better results first time then why not. The instructions have you attach the collarband to the top collar first and then separately attach each side of the collarband to the inside and outside of the jacket. To attach the collarband to the body of the jacket and the facing/lining, I machined the centre of each seam first, then each side leaving the last centimetre or so to the corner and hand stitched this part. Here is a photo to try and illustrate that step since it is hard to explain. You can see it would be quite tricky to get the machine right into the point on the right hand side.
The only other part that is slightly non intuitive is inserting the zipper in the jacket front - the illustration in the pattern instructions confused me and I found it much easier to separate the zipper before stitching, like this;
I mentioned in an earlier post that the fit is a little unusual, there is a lot of ease built into the chest area, and very little in the waist. Even without my usual FBA there is still plenty of room in the size 12 I made straight from the envelope. Something to watch out for although personally it worked for me and is I think quite a flattering style for my shape. Hopefully, depending on the camera situation I will be able to get some pics of me wearing it soon.