a pretty outfit (cielo and sixtine)

So I made an oh-so pretty, fluttery, flower-strewn outfit of the most perfectly spring-worthy persuasion! but wait…  am I not currently still on the downwards slope to the dark dank pit of winter?  well yes, so we are just barely into July, and I am OVER winter already.  *sigh*

Really I expect I’ll be making winter-y things soon but I just don’t feel like it right now, and I just want to think about fun summery things still.  Terrible, isn’t it?  Anyway, I bought this lovely rose-y rayon-linen in Spotlight, back when Perth was sort of half in isolation.  I’d been feeling very down, gone shopping for some essentials and just spontaneously decided buy something pretty and non-essential at the same time, to cheer myself up.  As it turned out, we had hardly any cases of the covid-19 virus in Perth, which is of course wonderful; but we were all as terribly worried at the time as if there were and buying something lovely lifted my spirits quite a lot at the time.

I cut out the ruffle-tastic new Sixtine skirt by Coralie Bijasson patterns and then had just enough left for a plain little top, which is the best counterpoint for all that ruffle anyway.  I’d recently had success making the Closet Case patterns Cielo top for Cassie so traced out the  next size up for me.  And I really love how they go together!  The Sixtine pattern is a simple, completely symmetric, true wrap skirt, with the most amazing ruffle and a half action going on.  Actually when I say ruffle and a half, that is quite literally what it is; there’s a ruffle, and then another half of that same ruffle on top.  Ruffle and a half! And my fabric worked out so nice! it is quite fluid and soft, which was just right for the ruffles; they have just exactly the right amount of body and zero limpness.The Cielo top is a great little basic, I can already tell I’m going to make stacks more.  Simple, but perfectly so.

I don’t really have much else to add, both these patterns are unambiguously straightforward designs with no tricks to speak of.  With the Sixtine skirt, I think you were supposed to place the buttonholes and buttons so the buttons popped out on the outside of the waistband when buttoned up, but I used very plain sheer flat ones from my stash, both ancient and inherited and not very pretty, so I positioned them so they button up on the inside of the skirt.

Oh, I also finished the lower hemline of both ruffles using the triple-stitched narrow hemline, explained in this post here.

I have one more sort of interesting thing I can say about sewing this; normally when you’re cutting things out from a print you carefully make sure all your pattern pieces are aligned with the “up” side in the same direction, yes?  Well I would definitely do that for fabric with a nap, but for a fabric with a print I’ve often preferred the look when I do not adhere strictly to this rule, but lay pieces so as to alternate up and down placement.  That way you avoid that “double-ing up” up of an identical motif that can look absolutely terrible and obvious when it occurs in a pieced garment.  Obviously this really only works if the print doesn’t have an obvious “right way up” design, but while it’s only a little thing it can make a noticeable difference.  As soon as I looked at my pictures here I could see a couple of instances where an upside-down motif is not too far away from a right-way-up motif, and if they’d been both oriented the same it would have looked strange.  So I’m glad!  I hope I explained that OK!

Anyway, I love this new ensemble and honestly can’t wait til the weather is hot again so I can actually wear it.  In the meantime perhaps I should start finally turning some attention towards more wintery projects  (sigh)

Details:

Top; the Cielo top by Closet Case patterns
Skirt; the Sixtine skirt by Coralie Bijasson patterns
Shoes; both super old now but still much loved

Later edit; so I added some pockets to this skirt! They’re patch pockets, with a slightly gathered top, drawn in by a little olive ribbon, which I happened to have in my stash.  They’re simple but of course useful.  Who doesn’t like a little bit pf practicality along with their floomph?!

Here’s a brief overview…

the pockets are cut to fit my mobile phone in, and are about 3cm wider at the top…

I snipped a little hole in the outer layer of the upper hem/casing..

the gathering ribbon emerges from this hole

align the raw ends of the ribbon inside with the raw edges of the upper pocket hem/casing

ensure the ribbon ends are stitched down firmly along with the pocket… gently pull up the excess pocket width at the top and tie off the ribbon…

camouflaged but not totally, and I think it looks kind of pretty when you do notice it   🙂