Sunday 29 July 2012

A two-skirt weekend

Pattern: Tiered maxi skirt from Make It and Love It (via Delia Creates)















Fabric: Ditsy cotton and plain cotton from Mason's

Size: Me!

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend about how we want to start dressing as the 30-something girls we are - a bit more grown-up and sophisticated. So I made a skirt most 5-year-olds would love to wear to a party with jelly and ice cream. Ah well, that's just my style!

The tutorial is for a maxi skirt for a child, but the measurements are so simple that with a bit of maths even I could cope with, I changed it to a knee-length skirt for an adult. Magic!

I am particularly pleased with this project as it meant resurrecting fabric that I thought I had killed. Before the items on this blog began, I made an attempt at following a tutorial for a simple skirt with a smocked waistband. The tutorial assured me that the fabric would shrink by half once the smocking was done. Either they lied or I did something very wrong because I ended up with a skirt I could share with a number of friends, simultaneously. I made a couple of hacked attempts to save it but the result was just a pile of useless fabric pieces. I felt very annoyed that I had wasted perfectly good, and very pretty fabric, so made some bunting to make myself feel better.



















As it has been gloriously sunny recently, my wardrobe thoughts turned to gypsy skirts and so I sought out a tutorial. I thought it would be fun to do a striped one, and through the conservatory doors, I saw the scraps of fabric waving at me. I made my measurements and did lots of cutting out and sewing bits together to create the strips. The beauty is that as the skirt is so froofy, the joins get lost in the folds of fabric. A bit of elastic, and some pretty lace edging later, and my beautiful fabric has a life!!

I am also very pleased as there was a certain amount of freestyling with this, working out lengths of panels, where to put the lace, and how to attach, etc. I'm always in awe of Elena at Tea for Two Diary and her ability to just make stuff up as she goes along, so I'm chuffed to be even part way on the journey to being that clever!

Yet again, you're going to have to suffer some awful self-takes, and a couple of quickly-done close-ups of the fabric. This has to be the most fun item I own right now I think. It makes me glad just looking at it and that can't be bad!

That's my bike, Troy, photobombing me on the first shot.












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