Back into it, with a skirt and shirt

Well, its been a while, I know!  After so much sewing over the autumn and winter, I took a bit of a break to make the most of the brighter weather, and to spend time on other things.  Now that I'm getting back into sewing, I've decided to focus this year on making work wear garments to build up this part of my wardrobe, and to try and co-ordinate the pieces as much as possible.

I've started with a skirt and 2 tops, from the fabrics I bought back in Oz in March.  It's like the finished items will be a belated holiday souvenir! 

The skirt I've made before, Butterick B5249, however this time I made view A, a simple straight skirt.  I'd recommend this pattern to you all, it's quite versatile, and the different views mean it can be made over and over again.

The first top to go with this skirt is a shirt in New Look 6407.  I'm making view D.  The fabric is a silk poly and was a complete nightmare to cut out; real slippery.  I had to cut each piece from single layer, it took absolute ages to do as it kept moving about.  Luckily though, sewing the fabric was pain free.  I did french seams on all except the armholes, which I over locked due to the curve.  To set in the sleeves I used my usual process of spreading the ease manually with pins rather than by gathering.  And I decided not to go for a bow and cut-out on the sleeve, but to instead just have a band which I decorated with an overlap and button.  The sizing on this pattern came up small - I cut a 12 which fit my measurements, but I really could have done a 14.  This picture doesn't have the hem and buttons sewn on yet, but you still get the idea!

The 2nd top will be a self drafted pattern and is still in progress, so I'll save that for a later post.

BurdaStyle 01/2011 - 113 Skirt

My first Burdastyle magazine pattern is completed!  Overall I'm pretty happy with this skirt, although I had a few little issues with the construction. 

The fabric I used came from a sample rack so I'm not entirely sure of its contents, however I think it must be lycra based as it has a bit of stretch - this is a good thing as this skirt is quite close fitting! 

The yokes:  Getting a nice clean V shape on the yokes was difficult and I didn't quite get there unfortunately!  You can see from the picture that the back V dose not sit so flush. 

The godet:  I loved this element of the skirt in the magazine picture, but unfortunately this part just did not quite work on mine.  I think this was because of 2 factors -

• I had taken 2 inches off the length when cutting out to get it to my desired length, however I forgot to adjust the the godet seam mark on the pattern up by 2 inches also.   This meant that my godet was far too small;
• The fabric doesn't have enough movement in it so the godet stuck out rather than fall softly into a fold.  Looks more than a little odd so off it came!



The tailored jacket is still in progress and coming along slowly, I should have a post soon as an update.

Butterick B5249

For something nice and quick to make whilst pondering on my dress alterations, I chose skirt B in this Butterick pattern.

The material used was a polyester wool mix in a tiny checkered multi brown pattern.

I used my new toy - a Juki MO 644D over locker for the edging, pocket seams and waistband seam - I discovered that I could over lock the seam, then under stitch using the sewing machine, it was a very neat and compact finish. 

I made 2 small pattern alterations - I took the waistband down by 1.5 inches so that it sat more on my hips which I prefer, and I also lined the skirt.  All up, this took me about 8 hours, which for me is pretty good (I'm not the fastest sewer!).  I like the pocket pleat detail as it's something different for a work skirt, and also the edge finishes from my over locker was pretty satisfying too. 

Perfect for the office, and today I bought more of that fabric to make a matching jacket in this Burda pattern:

Simplicity 2413

Okay, already onto my next project!  View A, tulip skirt style is up next.

Making the muslin trial of this skirt, I realised it was pretty simple, but if not done just right, it would look really home-made.  For instance I will get a tracing wheel and paper to get the pleats exact so it doesn't look unbalanced.  And I need to pay attention to pinning and sewing the pleats as you'll notice below the front pleats should be facing outwards not inwards (oops!).  I haven't got my material yet for this skirt so the project is on hold for now; I'm hoping to find something great at the Knitting and Stitching fair in a few weeks time.

 

After posting the above, I could see it wasn't just the direction the pleats faced that was the only thing wrong.  Now, I'm not sure if I was being a numpty, but I just couldn't get how I should be folding them.  It took me quite some time to figure it out too!  So for all of you who are also struggling with this, here's some help:

On each side of the centre, fold on the 2nd dotted line and bring to the first dotted line.  Next fold on the 4th line and bring to the 3rd, and so-on.  Wrong side should then look like this:

Front skirt wrong side view

Flipping that over it will look like this (better than the muslin look right?!):

Front skirt view

Update - 28/10/2010

Yes, I got stuck again, hence the reason why it's taken me sooooo long to finish this project.  This skirt has pockets built into the side seams, and I've been perplexed about how to insert the zipper into the side seam as well as having the pocket there.  Wouldn't the pocket be unusable if the zip was closed??   Anyhow, the pattern instructions were absolutely terrible at this point which meant I had to figure it out myself.  I admit, I gave up. I left the pocket out and just sewed in the zipper.  There, skirt finished, job done.

If only! I had to solve it so my mind could rest.  So, after a lot of pinning, unpinning, pinning again, still with no luck, I went onto the web and finally came across a forum question in PR where another confused sewer had this same problem (at least I'm not the only one!).  The forum response directed me to a blog where a picture made it all go "click" in my brain - yay!

So to help any fellow sewers out there struggling to understand as well, here is how I did it:

Sew the pocket pieces right sides together. 

Attach the front part of the pocket to the front of the skirt in the normal way. 

Attach the invisible zipper to the back piece of the skirt normally also - ie. the pocket does not get sewn onto the back of the skirt at all. 

Then, the front of the zipper attaches to the back of the pocket and to the front part of skirt above pocket top.  Difficult to explain but I hope the pictures have helped.

And now the final product...

I do love this skirt, I wore it out to dinner in London and it was a hit :)  I will definitely make it again and next time with no dramas at all!