Roses skirt

I completed another sewing project!  This is what happiness is.

It only took me two years and one month from starting this in September 2011 with the lofty idea of quickly running up a simple skirt... Yeah. Ha-ha.

I posted the completed Roses Skirt project to mysewingcircle.com. See link.

Here it is in all its glory:

 

 

The notes on the MySewingCircle site explain my sewing process lots more (if you're a glutton for punishment and want to know all of the itty-bitty details) but suffice to say that this was supposed to be a six panel skirt, but turned into a five panel skirt when I realised that they already fit me (I must have calculated wrong).

I picked a yoke in plain black to calm the print down a bit, plus I didn't have enough fabric for all six panels to begin with. I cut two panels wrong and went back to get more of this fabric.  Thankfully I had started this project soon after my initial fabric purchase and the shop still had quite a bit left. That was lucky.

On the other hand I now have lots of this fabric left in my stash. Oh dear.

I started by sewing the zip to the black yoke because I find that the most difficult part of the process.  I was then told by someone that I was doing this all wrong because you're meant to attach a zip to the lining first, and by yet another person that I was doing this all wrong because I was meant to cut a narrow tube of lining fabric and not the same panels as the outer fabric.  Do you know what?  I think it turned out rather well.  And no, I don't think that my way of sewing this was wrong, I just did this a bit different to what other people would have done.  I am very happy with my result.

What I love most about this skirt is how full the hem feels.  I sewed it up by hand, doing an invisible hem by catching a few threads of the outer fabric every half inch or so.  This gives the bottom edge of the hem such a nice feel of luxurious fullness that you don't get when you machine stitch all the way around.

There is only one thing that is a bit of an obstacle in my getting lots of wear out of this. I've lost weight since I started so this skirt sits quite a bit looser on me than it could do.

I might have to attach belt loops and then wear it with a nice plain black belt.  That could work.

I got really scared of the lining fabric peeking out from under the hem so attaching it to the inner yoke fabric (a self-facing of the same black fabric) was the step that took the longest. I finally got up the courage to start by attached the lining to the yoke and found that it wasn't all that difficult to cut to size off those lining bits that were too long.

There was a bit more work involved in turning up the lining hem, but I got on with that really well so that the whole thing is now finished.  Such a nice feeling to know that I won't have to do any further little bit on this skirt, it is done.  And done means done.  Phew!