Skirtapalooza

 

I've learned something about myself today.  

I am decidedly unable to make a normal face when taking a photo of myself. 

 

See?  

It's much better if I don't look at the camera. 

Usually J takes my finished garment photos but I decided to test out the tripod that J's parents recently gave me (thank you!).  For some reason, I could not make a normal face no matter how many different photos I took.

I snorted out loud while I was sorting through them.  Ah well.  No top model here.  Maybe I'll get better at being natural in front of the camera.  It seems to be easier when there's actually someone taking the photo.  Something about the blinking light and frantic beeping on self timer mode....  I'd feel like I was looking normal and then at the last second I'd freeze or do something odd.  Makes for a good laugh, though!  Note the odd faces throughout this post. 

 

Moving on to the skirts, now.  I tried the slash-and-spread variation from Cal Patch's Design-It-Yourself Clothes using my basic a-line skirt pattern I drafted last week.   It basically consists of dividing your pattern into equal-ish sections and spreading them apart to create an exaggerated flare.  I have a love/hate relationship with fuller skirts.  I love the way full skirts look as a silhouette, but I don't often like them on myself.  There's something I don't like about having that extra bulk around my lower waist.  I always feel like it makes me appear much larger.   Instead of doing the slash-and-spread from the waist line, I decided to to start the flare right at my hip which eliminated the extra bulk in between my waist and hip.   Originally I was going to treat the top piece as a yoke, meaning there would be an actual seam where the flare started.  But then I thought, why not make it all one piece?

 

I had to do a bit of finagling to turn the two pieces in to one. There's bit of overlap at the side seam and bit more length (a tiny gap when tracing the two pieces together) at the center front and back.  But it works.  It's the perfect amount of twirly-ness, I do believe.  And slimmer just above the hip.

Skirt number one is made from more quilting cotton.  Hooray for fun prints.

 

Like my basic a-line skirt, I treated the muslin as an underlining on the final skirt.  Grosgrain ribbon waist facing.

 

 

 Look out!  Giant Liza Jane on the right.

For the olive linen version, I drafted a separate curved yoke piece, omitting the darts.  I put in some store bought piping to accent the seam (also because it's impossible for me to sew something one drab color).

And do I actually need that bright orange lace hem facing there?  Nope.  But is it pretty?  Yep.

I've always wanted to use lace hem facing on something.

 

And, check out my successfully not visible invisible zipper.  My first time putting one in correctly.  I think what put me off the first few times I tried was not pressing the coils forward enough.  Sewing during the daylight hours now means I see things a lot better.  I don't think I saw how flat the coils should have been on the failed attempts.  I also had to press the zipper on a hard surface.  My ironing board is too padded to press it flat enough. 

 

 

Skirt number three was just for fun.  I bought a beach cover up of some sort from the thrift store because it was about a yard and a half of hot pink linen for a dollar.  I laid my basic a-line skirt pattern out and used the ruffle from the original garment at the hem. 

 

The patch pockets are a new style called sorta-symmetrical.  I had pink and white striped buttons in my stash that match perfectly, but they are just attached for looks.

I used one of Lier's pocket tutorials over at Ikat Bag.  She has lots of great pocket tutorials as part of series if you are interested.  I realized after I finished my skirt that one pocket is slightly wider than the other, but I can't be bothered to fix it right now.  Only people who sew will notice.

 

And this is the point where I gave up the dream of being the next top model ;)

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Now, I know that's technically four skirts for the Summer of No Pants Challenge, but I have one more variation in the works.   Happy sewing!