Tag Archives: Skirt

a tartan mini, and a blue hoodie

01/10/2017 3:00 pm \ 40 Comments \

o hey!  Spring is definitely springing around here at last! but we did recently have one last gasp-y blast of winter in the last week which inspired me to make just one last little winter-y thing… I haven’t actually worn this new mini yet as per se, apart from taking these pictures! but well, you know, it’s nice to have a brand new thing waiting in the wings for when the next season doth roll back in.

Pattern; ye old fave, Vogue 1247, modified so that nearly all the interesting bits and style lines are removed and leaving it with a bare bones one piece front and two backs… Boooooring!  I know, sorry, but honestly, even without the famous waitress pockets, which I LOVE, the core shape of this skirt is what makes it a great basic pattern… for me, it is the perfect winter-mini silhouette.  Also, the fabric is quite thick, so pockets would have made it all too bulky really  🙂

 extreme pattern matching is my kinda sport…

Also, the usual lengthening by 12cm and full lining.

Fabric; I bought this lovely, pure woollen tartan in Japan of all places… I know! not really a place you associate with tartan, I mean, it really seems like the kind of thing you’d wait for a trip to Scotland to buy.  But I saw it, in a divine little shop called Check & Stripe, instantly fell in love and thought a little mini skirt would be nice.  It was a little price-y, so I only bought 80cm, which is just enough length so I could cut the waistband and then the mini with a substantial hem, just in case I should ever want to add some length back one day.

At first I thought I’d make it unlined and make a separate slip, for versatility in case I should want to wear it without tights… but common sense prevailed, obviously it’s a winter skirt and I would always be wearing it with tights…  so even though I went to the effort of HongKong seaming everything inside I still put in the lining after all.  It is a rather nice lining; a thin, black silk charmeuse remnant I discovered in my stash, during a recent sort through… but I have absolutely zero memory where it came from, though I have a feeling it was a cast-off from Mum.

I used all my own skirt-lining tips, here.

the inside is quite fuzzy and a little felty…

I made the bias-cut binding for myHongKong seams using an olive green cotton poplin from Spotlight, and busted a gut getting all the plaids and everything lined up and matching to the nth degree… it’s funny, once upon a time I mightn’t have been too excessively obsessive about getting the most perfectest of perfect pattern matching that the naked human eye can detect, oh well OK.  I have always been a bit like that! But I do think the advent of blogging and the thought that EVERYONE CAN SEEEEE!!  has ramped it up some, so that even a couple of mm has me hauling out the seam ripper and redoing seams.  THE PRESSURE!!!

 

 

 

  

Details:

Skirt; modified Vogue 1247, wool tartan and fully lined
Top; drape-y top a, from drape drape by Hisako Sato, linen knit, details here
Tights; voodoo
Boots; Roberto del Carlo, from Zomp shoes

OH! and I almost forgot about this dark blue hoodie… I actually made it months ago for our holiday to Alaska/Canada, but when packing I decided two fleece hoodies was overkill and I ended up only taking the hot pink one and leaving this one behind.  I shoved it to the back of a drawer and immediately forgot all about it.  Well, it’s pretty boring, so no wonder…  Recently I found it again and was like O hey! this thing!!  I’d already given the hot pink one to Cassie…well, she looks about a thousand times better in it! and so I’ll keep this one for the unglamorous things in my life like car- and dog-washing, gardening, camping etc…

Just like the hot pink one; this is made using Burda 8042, all materials from Spotlight.  Differences, I made the pockets as patch pockets, and the only matching separating zip I could find was a bit short, so it only zips up about two thirds of the way up.  I really like this partially-zipped look, so that’s ok with me.

The patch pockets; I overlocked the raw edges and then simply top-stitched them on, so there’s less bulk than the welt pockets I put in the pink one.

Here I’m wearing it on its very first outing, which also happens to be Clara’s very first outing to the beach!  She was so cute; growling and pouncing upon the odd patch of old smelly seaweed, being all amazed by the surf, and very excited at the seagulls.  She bravely got a little wet in the shallows and generally bounced about joyfully in her usual puppy way.  I’ve got high hopes that she is going to love beach walking just as much as I do!  Yay!!

    

Details:

Hoodie; Burda 8042, blue fleece
Tshirt; modified Nettie, Closet Case patterns, white cotton mix stretch, details here
Jeans;  Closet Case patterns Ginger jeans, dark blue denim, details here
Socks; knitted by me, details here
Shoes; Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes

location; Eagle Bay, Western Australia

Now that’s all very well, we all need basics blah blah blah, but I got my latest Vogue magazine the other day, which always gets me revved up to MAKETH YE NOT BORING STUFF BUT INTERESTING STUFF… and I’m like, well, how does Vogue magazine make boring things not-boring?

And of course… dramatic pose!  Hoodie equals kinda sporty, so; random piece of sporting equipment!  Socks with heels!!  now that’s more like it… ha!

what would Vogue do??  #wwvd

Wearing it here with my “she wears the pants” trousers, hand-knitted sockies and Pedro Miralles heels… what’s that? am I actually gonna leave the house like this??  I’ll never tell… 😉

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suits me to a tee

22/09/2017 5:36 pm \ 56 Comments \

So, a new year, a new Refashioners challenge…last year we did jeans, this time the thing to be updated is A SUIT.

Most disappointingly, I could find no one in my family or circle of friends to donate a suit to the cause. 😉  Well of course not…  let’s see; these things are a) expensive and b) made to last a lifetime.  It takes a lot for a man to give up his suit. And let’s not forget to mention the biggie; c) suits are usually beautifully tailored things and the very thought of giving one to somebody who is just going to take the scissors to it is a pretty big ask.  I know I wouldn’t give one up either!!

before…

So I went along to the the opshop and bought one.  It was $22.  Even then, I still felt pretty bad about chopping it up, and found myself mentally apologising to the unknown tailor the whole time.  My suit is a Sax Altman: Sax Altman has been making high quality, traditionally tailored suits in Australia using fine Australian wool since 1977.

Just so you know, this is a pretty good innings by Australian standards… It’s actually pretty difficult to find suits in opshops here, men hang onto them forever.  Lots of orphaned sports jackets and some suit pants, but not many matching sets.  I initially honed in on this suit just because it wasn’t black! it is a deep charcoal-y/chocolate brown with subtle blue and grey pinstripes.

the fabric is pretty beautiful…

Once I got it home and had got a good look at it I could appreciate its quality; it’s beautifully made and let me tell you it was pretty darn hard to make that first snip… I’d decided already that I would make something that would honour the original tailoring, and keep as much of the important bits as I could, this one had it all; the interlined padded fronts with hand-padstitching, horsehair interlining, bias cut strips of organza everywhere on the inside to stabilise various areas, taped fronts, and tonnes of inner tape everywhere; sometimes bias cut organza, sometimes a sturdy cotton, sometimes strips cut from the selvedge… these were variously used as stay tape in different spots, hidden inside.  It was all pretty heavily and exquisitely engineered and one thing’s for sure; I could never produce something like this myself!!

What I did: I wanted for the jacket to be quite close-fitted to my shape, so I opened up the lining at the lower back hem and took in the suit jacket through ALL the seams here… the centre back seam, the back princess seams and the side seams, at the same time, I took in the jacket lining through the seams inside too..  I didn’t touch the front darted seams because they ran into the front pockets and altering them would have ruined the integrity of the pockets.  Oh, I’m pretty pleased that I managed to keep EVERY SINGLE POCKET of the original suit… I really didn’t want to sacrifice any, I thought if I absolutely had to I would…  but I managed to keep them all.  THE SANCTITY OF THE ALMIGHTY POCKET MUST BE UPHELD!!!  (kidding)

I removed the sleeves and trimmed several inches off the shoulders, and cut off the lower half of the legs to use for new kimono sleeves, binding the lower armhole with bias-cut wool harvested from a sleeve.

The leg hemline had a really nicely turned up cuff, which I liked, and kept for the new sleeve hem.  I love the new bracelet-length sleeves! if I did have to nit-pick, in an ideal world I think I would have preferred a wider sleeve but you know refashioning, sometimes you just gotta make it work with what you have!

I turned in and stitched a new front opening line for the jacket, making it a long, diagonal straight front coming to a point with a single button closure (above).  I cut so as to remove the lower two buttonholes, keeping the original upper button hole and repositioning the upper button over a bit to give the front more of a “wrapped” kimono-inspired look.

That’s the jacket!!

The new skirt nearly drove me mad…. men and women are not built the same (duh); we women want width for our hips and hemline, and a narrow waistline… men’s clothes are made to be the total opposite.  And also, the CUT! because of course the legs and the fly of men’s suit pants are cut differently against the grainline to how a skirt is cut, this makes it extremely difficult to transform them into a skirt!  Fortunately the trousers were big enough I had a bit of extra width to play with here….  first of all, I took off the waistband and unpicked nearly everything except for the side seams where the side hip pockets were attached.

I removed the old zip which had gotten a little rickety over the years, and installed a new black dress zip.  This entailed truing up the grain lines at centre front and creating a completely new fly and fly shield.

you can just see at the top; a strip of organza that was used to stabilise the waistline… I kept as much of these superb “hidden” structural details as I could, too

I wanted a flat-fronted look to the skirt, so made wide long darts at the front waistline to pull in the extra width there, these I topstitched down on the outside, continuing the topstitching down seamlessly to become stitched pin-tucks down the full length of the skirt front.  This is exactly where the pressed line was for the trousers.

The skirt front is straight, but those back trouser legs are cut so as to curve IN, just where you don’t want them to when cutting a skirt, so I’d cut a triangular godet from the jacket sleeves, taking in the sleeve cuff buttons/buttonholes and the original sleeve hem.  I was a little disappointed that these were fake button-cuffs and can’t be opened… but they still look pretty nice you know, you can’t win ’em all  😉

I inserted the godets in the lower skirt side seams along with a long inverted pleat so the skirt back kicks out over the godet.  I actually love this little detail.

I don’t even want to say how many pinnings and bastings it took me to get this silhouette that I wanted; a flatt-ish skirt front and a slightly flippy skirt back.   LOTS

Finishing up… shortened the waistband, reinstalled it stitched the belt tabs down again… oh and still managed to maintain that little coin pocket that sits right beneath the waistband… pretty proud of myself that I finagled that, hehe: and BAM! finally done!!  A fresh new womanly suit made from an old discarded men’s suit, albeit a rather nice one.  I’m very happy with the long-line jacket with slightly kimono-y vibes and a short, structured-yet-flirty skirt.  I feel like it’s very very me  🙂

And I still had a few leftovers from a sleeve… so I made a bandanna for Clara, and a new little zipped pouch to hold her poo-bags.  *

*it’s the law in Australia that if you are walking a dog, you MUST be carrying  little placky bags so you can pick up after your dog, there’s a hefty fine if you’re caught without them! I just used to tie them on to Sienna’s lead and then for blog pictures would try to hide them because they’re so ugly…   or take her off her lead for a bit… you can see them in an earlier picture here…  anyway I don’t know why I didn’t make a little bag like this aaaages ago!

I used an old zip and attached a jump ring and a little swivel clip so it can clip onto her lead.  The swivel clip was a leftover from when I made my winter boots… they’re not terribly robust so I plan to replace it with a mini carabina when I can get hold of one.

The only new things I used for this refashion were: thread, the zip in the skirt, and the zip, jump ring and swivel clip in Clara’s bag.  Not too bad!

Details:

Jacket and skirt; my own design, finagled from an old mens’ trouser suit
Bodysuit; the Nettie by Closet Case patterns, from paprika stretchy stuff, details here
Shoes: Misano, from Labels boutique

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caramel corduroy skirt; 6 different ways

14/09/2017 11:09 am \ 34 Comments \

So, this is one of the things Craig picked out during our “their choice” challenge and said “this is horrible”  *sob*  Oh dear, but I could see it was true… the last few times I’ve worn it I’ve subconsciously hidden it under a long tunic because yep, it’s got pretty darn shabby.  But I loved it so and it was so useful!!!  It’s been thoroughly appreciated and loved to death in fact, I’ve already done a 6 different ways post on this very same skirt in its previous life as a yellow skirt!

You know what though, I don’t actually mind getting rid of things, even old favourites! because you do get into a bit of a rut and get to wearing the same old same old over and over and over … it’s a stagnation of sorts and one should shake it up every now and again, get rid of the old and force oneself to wear other, newer things.  Also, it’s spring and I’m in the mood for spring cleaning.

Speaking of that! I finally updated and wrote something in my “about me” page!!  it’s only taken me, like 8 years or so… hehe.  Have a read and please let me know what you think..

OK, my favourite ensembles with this skirt…

at left: worn in a 100%self-made outfit, with my triangles jumper, my navy blue tights, and my handmade winter boots… and there is my dear old Sienna of course.

This jumper is one of those wardrobe prima donnas that actually goes with but a mere select few things, so the caramel skirt, which went so nicely with it, is going to be a big hole in its life  🙁

at right; in anther 100% self-made outfit…worn with my forest green twist top, mustard cowl, piped trench coat, charcoal knitted gloves, black tights and again my handmade boots

at left; another 100% self-made outfit… with my ivory sweater, my caramel suede jacket, black tights and the same handmade boots.  This outfit was part of my third time joining in the one week one pattern thing, where I chose Vogue 1247, of course!  I’ve made up this pattern STACKs of times!

at right; wearing it with my olive suedette Burda tunic, my over dyed Nettie Tshirt, a scarf knitted by Mum, my over dyed tights, my olive green knitted socks, and rtw olive desert boots, long term favourites  Actually I really love this outfit A LOT

at left; in a 100% self-made outfit, worn with my snuggly chocolate jumper, bright green knitted hand-warmers, my ivory infinity cowl, my black tights, and once again, my handmade boots.

at right, this is probably one of my all time favourite ensembles with the skirt, worn with my mustard Miette hand knit, my raspberry scarf, black tights… no doubt I had a self-made Tshirt on underneath but I can’t remember now!  Those boots are my rtw ones though…   😉

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chilli-red paprika jade skirt

14/06/2017 12:13 pm \ 14 Comments \

Oh hello, fellow needle-wielders!

Recently I decided I wanted, nay needed, a new colourful Jade mini-skirt; since my purple one was tragically taken too soon… *a minute’s silence, please*

…

Well, ta da!

I’d gone back to Knitwit in search of the same purple knit… why the same colour? perhaps because I’m a boring unoriginal creature of habit? but unfortunately they had sold out of the purple.  So I chose this chilli-red instead.  Rather nice, hmmm?

Every time I try to take any pictures in the full-on blasting sun, I regret it… however this does show off the lovely vibrant fiery-ness of this intense red rather well

For the lining, I cutup an old black Tshirt, one of Sam’s toss-outs, it’s quite a nice, sturdy, not-very stretchy and robust 100% cotton black knit, so should work really well as a lining. .  I’d given some thought into the lining this time, since the tragedy of too-much stretchiness of the purple one… that was a 100% polyester whereas my other stretch mini skirt, my self-lined charcoal one is a cotton jersey, quite stiffish with only a one-way stretch and that is holding up very nicely.  The black Tshirt fabric I used for this is very like that…

obligatory lining picture is pretty boring, sorry

With this version, I fitted and reinforced the waistband with stretch interfacing so it is quite firm and minimally flexible…

… AND put in an exposed black/brass jeans zip into this skirt.. I’m hoping these two factors will help keep that waistband firm and strong, so it suffers minimal stretching out and extend the life of the skirt…  Just for looksie’s alone, I just love the brassy glint of the zip, I think it looks really cool.

Going from my past jade skirt AND my past red skirt experiences, I KNOW I’m going to wear this a metric tonne.  Can’t wait to mix and match this  one to bits!

Details:

Skirt; Paprika patterns Jade skirt, red silk/linen knit from KnitWit
Top; the twist top from Pattern Magic, in ivory ponte also from KnitWit, details here
Tights; my own design, black polyester stretch from Spotlight, details here and my tutorial on how to make your own custom tights pattern here
Boots; made by me and my own design, all details here

location; the bush in south western Western Australia

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…getting a Brazilian…

04/06/2017 11:38 am \ 28 Comments \

Olá!

Soooo, I mentioned my brother’s BIG birthday? well to go with it he had a BIG birthday bash! with a Brazilian theme.  I stupidly procrastinated about my costume, ended up going shopping for fabric the day before the party and had to cut n’ sew like a madman to get it done on time. #sewingmachineonfullblast

I’d first googled “Brazilian women” and what came up was nothing but women in bikinis.  NO.  Even if this were the very height of summer… still no.  So then I googled Brazil women’s national costume, and oh yes, that’s more like it!

These lovely ladies are wearing the traditional dress for Bahian women, and I thought the white lace and broderie anglaise tops and headscarves and full, brightly coloured skirts so very lovely.  So I set about making something like that…

For simple yet voluminous skirt that you can whip up quickly, you can’t go past a circle skirt… I bought 4m of red polyester taffeta from the $4 table at Spotlight… it is very stiff and very silk dupion like and I knew it would stick out nicely with a good amount of volume.  I cut out my circle skirt and divided the remainder to make a waist sash and a scarf for part of my headgear.  The skirt is a full 2m in diameter, and I thought about making it rush rush rush but nah. I just can’t do that sort of thing, even in a costume.  So it’s got a proper interfaced waistband, and closes with an invisible zip and a press stud in the waistband.  Hehe, while I was making my costume, Tim sent around a snapchat re it being National Doughnut Day, and I was like HA!  I’m fitting right in!  This is MY kind of doughnut!!

Oh, I have a little tip!  I usually hand-slipstich the ends of my invisible zips to the seam allowance with a few quick stitches, but lately I’ve taken to just doing a few quick back-and-forths on the sewing machine.  It’s so much quicker since you’re not having to thread a needle, and actually more stable too.

Speaking of rush rush, I admit I did not hem that giant circle skirt… it’s just overlocked along the edge there!  I figure that if/when I ever decide to wear it “for realz” then I’ll go to the effort and hem it properly.  Probably seems funny that I did the waistband properly when it’s not even “seen” in my costume, whereas the hem, which is fully visible, I didn’t finish properly… but you know, some things are easy to re-do later and some are not.  The waistband is the kind of a thing you’ve got to do it right the first time.

The blouse is made from an old lace curtain that was originally had hanging in an upstairs window… I took it down when we re-did our floors up there and have just never hung it up again! Lazy? the view was too nice? Both really  😉   A bit off one end was sacrificed for my top, hehehe.  I had also bought a length of white cotton/linen for the lining, there’s quite a few bolts of this in Spotlight at the mo’ selling for very cheap; I’ve actually bought quite a lot of it lately, for other projects yet to appear here…

My pattern is very loosely the epaulette top from She Has a Mannish style, cut to flare out more in the body and sleeves…  the lining is cut straighter in the sides.  The shell and lining have separate side seams, but are sewn together at the shoulders and armscye.  I pinned and stitched a square neckline, cut and overlocked the edge, and then stitched a length of white cotton bobbin lace around to edge it, part of a large stash that I’ve had for many, many (many, many) years.  It’s funny, I kind of threw this together just for the costume, but you know what?? I actually love it and will definitely be wearing this again, in real life!
Waist sash:  22cm x 3.8m, I wrapped it twice around my waist and finished off with a giant pouffy bow.  Head scarf:  30cm x 2.4m of white,  21cm x 2.3m of the red;  I’d cut the white wider to be the main colour with the red to be more of an accent, like how the Bahian ladies that had popped up in my google search have their headscarves.  I’d also googled “how to tie a Brazilian head scarf” and found this video which was sooooorta helpful, I kind of based mine off her first example… but my scarf is much much longer and I obviously tied and tucked and folded extra knots in mine so as to be a much higher and more complicated affair… I’d also made two “ropes” of the white and red and twisted them to tie around my headscarf to help keep it in place.

after this photo, I redid my headscarf and I think it was a lot better the second time!  but didn’t have enough time to take another pic 🙁

For footwear, I’d noticed that the ladies tend to wear low, flat, open sandals; very comfortable things like birkenstocks but not anything specific.  I got out a few of my sandals, and Mum voted for my little white sandals, that I made last summer.  I danced the night away in these things, and they’re still holding up great!

So that’s it!  We had a blast… I wish I could show you a picture of my son Tim, who went as Gisele Bündchen in a blonde wig, bikini top, boy leg shorts and full on wings a la Victoria’s Secret.   And clonking boots on his feet.  It was hilarious.  Absolutely he was the belle of the ball!

just use your imagination…

Another funny little moment of the evening’s preparations… Craig used this picture as his costume inspiration… we’d bought red, blue, green and yellow feather boas from Spotlight to customise the black pants and black shirt that he already had in his wardrobe.. we also bought yellow satin for a sash and a yellow velour fedora from Spotlight too…

Well, he’d cut and tied together lengths of the feather boas to make the leg and arm bands… and there was like masses of feather fluff and debris all over the floor.  So he’d got out the vacuum cleaner to do a quick tidy up.  Well, he was vacuuming quite perilously close to the little pile of carefully tied together feather boa bands… and I was literally just about to say “you might want to move those feather things” when FWOOOOOOOP! this quite long string of feather boas just disappeared! right up the vacuum cleaner in a flash!!  Like, literally a split second and they were gone, like a garishly coloured, feathery snake zooming at top speed into a burrow, …  well, Kelly and I burst out laughing and just couldn’t stop, haven’t seen anything so funny in aaaages!  Panic!  Don’t worry, we opened up the vacuum cleaner and rescued the furry beast from its lair, I mean, the feather boa, fortunately none the worse for wear.

SO much fun.  EEEEE, I LOVE costume parties!!

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purple-y Jade mini skirt, 6 different ways

26/05/2017 10:08 am \ 28 Comments \

During another of my sometimes brutal wardrobe clean outs, I parted ways with this little purple skirt… I have to admit it was a little gut-wrenching to get rid of this one because it had only been in existence for one sad little winter, albeit a glorious one, since I wore it at least once every week!  Aah! little purple mini skirt, the light that burns twice as bright burns but half as long… and your light has burned so very very bright…  *

I made it in a purple wool/silk knit from KnitWit, using the Paprika patterns Jade skirt… and it was such a devastatingly useful, mix-and-match-tastic item of clothing! actually as all sludgy coloured little mini skirts are.  Sadly, the knit, while a gorgeous colour, of a lovely weighty thickness and with a magnificent “quality” feel and texture to it, didn’t have a huge amount of recovery… and I’d used a VERY stretchy black poly for lining it, some leftovers from my tights! if I recall correctly!  Definitely not sturdy enough to give the purple knit the backbone it needed, so the whole thing got floppy quite quickly.  Toward the end of winter I actually worried a bit that it would at some point slide slowly and gracefully south down my smooth, black-tights clad legs to my ankles and become a rather gorgeous purple hobble…. haha wouldn’t that be glamorous/fabulous/amusing… NOT.

Anyway, because it’s been that good I thought I’d give it a little farewell party… the fact that I only wore it for one winter and still found six outfits where it is paired with almost totally different items of clothing in each one is testament to its versatility!  Also, since these were all taken during my Year of Handmade; you know, that year in which I wore ONLY clothing and shoes made by myself, ahem…I made every single blinking thing I am wearing in each of these photos, which is why the black boots appear in so many outfits, sorry…

Links to all construction posts provided  🙂

Below: at left; with its matching top, charcoal gloves, black tights, black boots
At right; with ivory top, blue cardigan, navy cardigan, purple scarf, charcoal gloves, navy tights, black boots

Below, at left: with charcoal twist top, raspberry tights, black boots;
At right; with pink jumper, green scarf, lime green hand warmers, black tights, black boots

Below at left: with ivory top, grey coat, raspberry scarf, black tights, black boots
at right: with coffee Tshirt, striped jumper, black tights, black oxford shoes

Ok, so it’s awff to the sewing room… because clearly I need a new one …

* Blade Runner, after Lao Tzu

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terracotta axel skirt

04/05/2017 5:11 pm \ 22 Comments \

Hey!  I’ve made this new skirt.  Actually I’ve made lots of new things lately and just haven’t yet blogged them… oops!  Getting onto that, asap!  Hehe, actually a good thing about me-made May is that it kinda forces me to blog as yet unblogged things that I want to wear that day.  Well it means I have to, otherwise… what would I link to??  *horrified gasp*  O, the shame of having nothing to link to!

 

Pattern: the Megan Nielsen Axel skirt.  I bought this pattern a few months ago, on one of the several occasions I’ve wandered into Potters Textiles in fruitless search of the Dove blouse pattern.  The Dove seems to be a pattern that is perpetually sold out… yes, I could have bought a pdf but I kinda had my heart set on a paper pattern.  Mostly because I adore Megan’s illustrations that she does for the envelope.  Aren’t these adorable?   I also have another, different Megan Nielsen pattern that I have recently finished too… but that shall wait until another day and its own separate blog post…. 😉

I made the short, straight version 2 only without the waist ties because this one is actually just my trial version of the pattern…  I was toying with the idea of using it for one of my Melbourne fabrics and just wanted to test it out for fit first.  This is a pattern designed for firm fabrics with some stretch, because it is a tight, form-fitting pattern, but in quite a nice way I think.  The style actually reminds me a LOT of the figure-hugging little pencil skirts we used to wear to high school in the 80’s.  Btw, and going off on a random tangent… if you want to see a daggy homemade mockup of my old school uniform; I put this one together for a school reunion a few years ago…

Fabric: a stretch polyurethane laminate “pleather” from Spotlight.  I’d originally bought several metres of this stuff on superDUPER special; I had the thought of making either shoes or a raincoat… then I went off it and shoved it away and out of sight.  As you do!  I’ve made quite a lot of things out of this stuff in the past, here, here, here, here and here!  Some have been more successful than others and so I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the stuff  😉  When I was searching for something to run up a muslin/trial thing I thought “oh what the heck this’ll do”, made it up, and you know what?!  I’m actually liking how it turned out, like, A LOT!  It’s like an old-fashioned love story; fabric and pattern met, eyes locked across the room, hearts went a-pitter-pat, the stars aligned, fireworks exploded, champagne corks opped, they rode off into the sunset together and are bound to live happily ever after.

 

Some details: I cut the front on the fold so as to eliminate that unnecessary centre front seam; also, to accommodate my ahem, pear shape; I pro-actively graded out from an S waist out to an M at the hips.  And I’m pretty happy with the fit. See, this is why we sew!  Style-wise; it’s an extremely simple, no-fuss, zero-drama design, with absolutely no closures; just the simplest of bands for a waistband that you pull up over your hips.  Not even kidding, this took me like a few minutes to whip up, tops.

simple stretch waistband


I’ve learnt in the past that this pleather doesn’t hem well… so I just cut a sharp clean edge using my rotary cutter, and angled the seam allowances inside the skirt so there’s no danger of them peeping out under the lower edge.
Also, it’s tricky to press, but does look about a thousand times better if you do… it’s best to press on the underside and use scrap fabric when you’re going over the seams, the plastic right side of the fabric will soften and melt ever so slightly and I found I had to peeeeel off the pressing scrap after pressing.  So it’s best to be quick and not let the iron linger on for too long!  Some more of my tips for sewing with leatherette or pleather are here and here

    

Details:

Skirt; MN 2207 (Megan Nielsen Axel), terracotta polyurethane laminate “pleather”
Top; own design variations on the Epaulette cut & sewn from the Japanese pattern book “she has a mannish style”, also called “she wears the pants” by Yuko Takada, apricot crepe, details here
Shoes; designed and made by me, details here

Location: along the South Perth foreshore

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“bookshelf” skirt

18/04/2017 3:32 pm \ 21 Comments \

Hello!  I’ve finished the second part of my little autumn wardrobe-lette… a new skirt! using a printed, upholstery-weight cotton canvas from the Fabric Store in Melbourne, the fifth fabric from the top in this pic of my Melbourne acquisitions…

I absolutely fell in love with this print at first sight, in fact the very minute I spotted it I GRABBED IT!  Not even counting the rather yummy autumnal colours… it reminds me of bookshelves, stacked not quite full, with the colourful spines of the books tipping over a bit into the gaps between them.  I love libraries, in fact it’s been a lifelong daydream of mine to have a room that is completely lined with shelves of books, from floor to ceiling, and a big squishy armchair right in the middle of the room, either faded rusty-red or bottle-green velvet, can’t decide but either would be nice, big enough for me plus at least one cat, and with one little curly-legged side table just big enough for a stained glass lamp and a cup of tea perched on top.  *sigh*

Wait, where was I? oh yes ahem…SKIRT.

 

Pattern; Vogue 8363, one I’ve used many times before, actually I’ve just counted and have made it TWELVE times previously!  You can look at ALL of them by clicking here….

Some of the many reasons I love this pattern so are; a) gorgeously deep slanted side pockets, in fact I can’t help noticing I have my hands shoved deep deep down into those pockets in, only like, every single picture.  They’re just that wonderful, I simply can’t resist!  Also b) straight side seams, making it a nice one for pattern matching, c) double darts in the back which lend themselves very nicely to the wide hips/narrow waist/slight sway back adjustment that I usually make.  I tend to use view D for the pockets, which has a button front placket at the centre front; I obviously eliminate this though and instead have an invisible zip closure at the centre back.  I also like to cut the skirt part roughly two sizes up from the waist part, because I like that boxy with nipped in waist silhouette on me.

Also, this time I added belt loops because I decided all that psychedelic tipping-stripe-y action could probably benefit by being visually reined in with a solid, sombre, no-nonsense belt.  Now it’s finished and I’ve worn it thus, I think yep, this was a good idea

Partly because I stingily didn’t buy much of the print, and also partly for the same visual grounding reason as having a belt: I cut the pocket bags in a thick chocolate brushed twill, a small bit of leftover fabric harvested from Craig’s old pair of chocolate moleskins and which I used to make this skirt, also  Vogue 8363.

Inner workings; I had to piece the chocolate moleskin to get pieces big enough for the pocket bags, but the seams are tucked down deep in the pockets… I used plain black cotton for the waistband facing and pocket facings.  Because I’m a bit of a stickler for matching threads, I switched threads on BOTH my sewing machine and overlocker several times during the making of this skirt!

Above, I spaced it to turn up the hem exactly between two horizontal stripes in the print.  The lower edge of the skirt is finished in bias cut black cotton, the same as for the inner waistband and pocket facings.  See that little tiny row of mustard stitches along the top? I initially started hemming with black thread to match the bias; but quickly realised that even though I made my stitches as tiny as tiny could be, that row of minuscule black dots did show up on the right side of the skirt if you looked closely enough, and I didn’t like it!!  So I switched to the same mustard thread that I’d used in other seams, which disappears nicely into the print.. so they’re pretty much invisible on the right side, which is the main thing!

Above; I chose a mustard invisible zip.  When it came to placing the belt loops, I put two on the front, spaced just outside the waist-shaping dart; and three on the back, the outer two just outside the outer waist shaping dart, and one in the centre back.  It abuts the waist closure, which I wondered would make it difficult to put in the belt; but it doesn’t, it slips through just fine and isn’t a bother at all.  Oh, and waistband closure? there’s a wide hook/eye stitched in under there.

Also, darts?!  One of the most serendipitous things I discovered about this print is that you can barely make out any darts at all! can you even see them in the above picture?? they’re just buried there in amongst those higgledy-piggledy books.  WIN!

I’m wearing today paired with my basic black Tshirt because I wanted the skirt to take centre stage in this, its own dedicated post… but I also think it looks quite nice worn with the, as yet one other piece in my autumn mini-wardrobe, the apricot top.  Actually, I only picked up the apricot crepe because of this fabric!

sorry for the blurriness.  Clearly I’m busily dashing off on a very important mission… like, to get the leaf blower

 

Details:

Skirt; Vogue 8363, printed cotton canvas, my review of this pattern here
Black Tshirt; self drafted, details here
Belt; had this for about 30 years
Black shoes; designed and made by me! details here

Above picture:
Apricot top; the epaulette cut and sewn, pattern no.4 from “she has a mannish style” by Tuko Takada, details here
Brown and ivory clogs; also designed and made by me, details here

  

Also; on Eagle Bay beach, Western Australia… Every time we come down here I have to walk along the beach and clamber over the rocks each day.  This is one of my favourite places on Earth.

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