A Few Finished Skirts

I finished up a few client skirts last week that Carol started for me before the holidays.  My process with Carol has been that I draft the pattern, she cuts the fabric and bastes the skirt together, then I do the fitting and finish it off.  So far this has worked well and it allows me to get skirts out the door a bit faster.

I think Carol did a stellar job using the fabric print on these first two skirts.

This is Kendra's straightforward yoked a-line skirt and the fabric is a stretch poplin I bought from Fabric.com ages ago.  Don't you love the colors??!  Because the yoke is curved, we decided not to try to match the print there.  My instructions to Carol were something like, "Be thoughtful about how the print comes together at the yoke line."  Yep, that's me, super helpful.  And I love what Carol did!

This second skirt is Lisa H's gored a-line using some kind of stretch drapey twill I bought from GorgeousFabrics.com.  Because the skirt has six panels, we knew we couldn't match up the print across the seam lines or we'd run out of fabric (I had three yards, but it was only 42" wide and the skirt is long).  Carol and I took a look at the fabric together to figure out how best to use the print, and Carol came up with the diagonal idea.  When she went to cut it out, she didn't have enough fabric to continue doing this across that back, so genius struck and she reversed the direction for one panel.  Nice, huh??!

Front

Back

This last one took me a while to figure out how to draft.  Lara wanted a pencil skirt with a front pleat, but I didn't want to do panels because the wool had a somewhat looser weave, and I was worried about it getting all stretched out of shape.  I spent a good hour or so reading through the Adele P Margolis book, Make Your Own Dress Patterns, and finally came up with the ideas of inserting a side pleat that ran from the top of the skirt to the bottom, that is sewn shut until about 7 inches up from the hem.  The pattern piece looks kinda crazy:

with pleat un-pleated (disregard length difference between two halves)

with pleat pleated

The lovey wool fabric is from a haul I bought from a woman selling off her stash (thank you, Craigslist!).  I've had this lovely button (from the Eonomy Shop) in my stash for a couple of years now and I'm glad it finally found it's place.  I knew there was a reason I didn't use it earlier!

Finally, I'm happy to report that Mooper eventually decided that she likes her birthday dress (she wore it three days in a row until I insisted that it needed a wash). 

 

 

And check out the pink cowboy boots that Grandmother gave her!  Yee-haw!!

What's Up: Bias trim skirt, New pencil skirt, New bag coming

I am having a lot of fun these days with new projects.  Last week I finished Cora's Daddy-Daughter Dance outfit and entered it into a Valentine craft project competition at Craftsy (I love competitions!!).  I also finished the A-line skirt for the mother-daughter pair and made the prototype of a new clutch wallet I'm developing.  An exciting week!  This week looks good, too, as I continue to work on the clutch wallet, design a "corsetted" pencil skirt for Diane, and get ready for Skirt Party #2 on Saturday.

If you remember, this is the fabric that the daughter picked out for her A-line skirt:

The print is from Brandon Mably's 2009 Scales collection (more on his designs later in the week).  I made some 1/2 inch double-fold bias tape from it so that I could use it as trim on the hem and pockets.  G liked it so much that we used it for the waistband as well.  What do you think?

The clutch wallet still needs work so I won't post any pictures yet, but I'm making it from upholstery fabric scraps and swatches.  Beautiful fabrics and a nice way to repurpose materials bound for the dump!  Once I get it worked out, I'll post the instructions as a free tutorial.

I got the idea for the corsetted skirt from an Ann Taylor design.  Here's the original:

I love the seaming detail on this.  It's a simple embellishment that adds a lot to the finished look.  I've enjoyed the problem-solving that has gone into reverse engineering this skirt.  I got some help from my friends at the SewWeekly and I'm excited to see how the draft version of it turns out.  Like with the wallet, I know that the first version won't be it but it will get me there in the end!