brown

Yes, it is still extremely hot here.  And I am dying a little bit in these photos.  But what can I say?  I found all of these coordinating fabrics in my stash -mostly leftovers! – and each one was the perfect size to cut out the individual pieces for the skirt.  Win!  And I also had the acorn brown merino, that I’d bought last year during a sale from the Fabric Store.  So I feel like this is a totally seasonally inappropriate outfit that was nevertheless just crying out to be 🙂

The skirt pattern is the new FibreMood Crystal skirt… with some alterations, of course!  Let me explain… the pattern is very simple really; the front and back are the same except mirror images, and the waistband is straight.  Very uncomplicated.  I’ve made several skirts like this in the past and they’ve usually been fine.  However, nowadays I have higher expectations of my skirts, and I really really want for all my skirts to have pockets.  I know pockets can sometimes be a bit of a hot-button topic.. I’ve been seeing sewing peeps on instagram lately saying that they usually leave off pockets?! and that they hate them?!  amazing! but well to each their own.  This is why we make our own clothes, yes? not someone else’s.  I personally, love to have pockets, so I set about plotting how I could add them to the skirt.

I cut my waistband at my regular size, but cut the skirt pieces a size bigger than I would normally go for to allow for hands in pockets. I also cut and put in slanted pockets, and added darts to the skirt front and back to bring in that extra width to the waistband.  Instead of a zip, I made the skirt closure to be part of the pockets, as per this side-opening-over-a-pocket tutorial that I published previously here.  It’s quite a good method for adding pockets to a skirt actually  🙂

Added bonus is that my skirt fits really well now too, thanks to the darts!

I bound the edges of the pockets with some other brown cotton from my stash, which appears mysteriously to be grey in these pictures, but honestly it’s a deep black/brown.  I used the same brown cotton to bind the hemline.

My top is, of course, my usual modified Closet Core patterns Nettie.  This time I used my twin needle to finish the sleeves and hem, instead of bands.  I used thread from stash also rather than go shopping just for new thread, and the close-ups show how it doesn’t really match very perfectly… but honestly, the difference doesn’t show up quite that much!  Actually, all the close-ups here make the different browns look shockingly different, far more so than they are in real life!

Of course I added some of my new date-stamp labels.  Love these!

the caramel corduroy at the top of the skirt was leftover from these jeans, and the two middle cotton canvases were leftover from my Blanca flight dress and my Issey Miyake trousers… the dark brown, lightweight cotton corduroy that I used for the frill at the bottom was not a leftover, but one that Cassie had bought for me from Tessuti during a trip she took to Melbourne one year.  And, as mentioned, I bought this acorn merino last year.

Taking into account that I do have some leftovers still; these two pieces used up about 3m of fabric from my stash…  meaning this outfit brings me up to 13m for the year!  17m to go!