The Final Skirt

Well, unless I meet with a horrid accident before my resolve weakens, I guess this blog post title is actually a lie. It's incredibly unlikely that this skirt will be the last I ever make myself, but I felt I needed to make a strong statement of intent to drill into my brain that I really don't need any more. Including this one, I have eight in my wardrobe plus a couple under my bed (all of which are made by myself I should add) yet due to my preference for trousers, it's unlikely that any of these will see their number of 'wares per year' reach double figures. Anyway, let's actually meet this recent addition shall we?

I've had this awesome piece of vintage printed cotton in my stash since around Christmas time. I'm finding it really difficult to date as to my eyes it doesn't scream any specific era, but I'm guessing either late 50's or late 60's/early 70's. Anyway, the piece wasn't big enough to make a dress and a co-ordinating plain piece of fabric that might make a dress plan viable failed to materialise. Yet it took my boss to connect the dots between this piece of fabric and my current obsession with Simplicity 2451. She noted that I had yet to make myself the longer version. As I wise philosopher one said, I love it when a plan comes together. I'm going to bust me some stash...

'Yes' is the answer to the question you are probably currently asking, 'Yes, that print does seem to consist of bandstands in the undergrowth'. I have no answers beyond that!

In general I think this skirt came out really well. There is one thing that I am unhappy about though: I was careful to cut out the front yoke and front skirt pieces from different sections of the print so that they didn't look wierd when stitched together. I congratulated myself on being so foresightful and organised and then directly went on to fuse interfacing onto the back of said front yoke and made it part of the facing instead, leaving me with the facing part to use as the yoke which had been cut from a part of the print that looks too similar to the top of the front skirt section. Arse.

Now, because this fabric (which had been half of a curtain in another life) is actually quite thin, I decided to line the skirt using some turquoise lining fabric we had laying around at work. But I didn't want to create too much bulk behind the front pleats, so I decided to underline it. Well, I'm not entirely sure if the method I deployed is actually underlining, but it seems to work well so I'm happy. (I'm planning on putting a book on linings on my Christmas list. Does anyone have this book or something similar they have found to be useful?)

Note: I really eeked the fabric out as much as I could (hence my inability to recut the messed up front yoke piece), which is why the keenest-eyed among you may spot I had to cut the back facing pieces out of an alternative fabric:

This skirt is not perfect, but I do think it's pretty good and has made good use of lovely fabric which seemed to be begging to be made into something when it was folded and piled up in my stash. Its turquoises and goldy-mustard shades are firmly on my list of favourite colours to wear. It works well with my mustard top, so it's no orphan despite it's crazy print.

I cannot promise that I won't be making myself another skirt before long, but by declaring that I don't intend to, I'm putting myself in the mindset to enjoy what I have rather than concentrate on what might be missing and constantly looking towards the next project. There are some holes in my wardrobe that I feel are worthy of attention, but they are more of the layerable knitwear, multi-functional day-dress and lined jacket varieties. Skirts, I've got covered.