I may have said I wanted to sew more clothes this year, but there's been hardly any evidence of it on here. It's not that I've been slacking off though - my machine has been working hard, but it's mostly been working on clothes for sale now that I've started back at the Tea Rooms again. But here, finally, is something I can show!
I knew what I wanted to make with this unknown (polyester?) suiting fabric as soon as I found it in the op-shop - it would be perfect for a pencil skirt! At only 50p for about 2 metres, it didn't matter too much if I screwed it up.
The pattern is self-drafted, based on a few skirts I had, and plenty of Google images for research. It turned out to be fairly simple, although the first version came out a bit too wide at the hem. I fixed that by tapering it a couple of inches from the hips, so to give it that snug, fitted look. And snug it was too - I'd just finished lunch before the photoshoot, and had to get the Manbacon to close me up.
The faux-leather for the waistband came from a friend's fabric stash - we're currently working on handpainted cushions, and are using the fake leather for the backs of some of them. I 'borrowed' a long, narrow strip for the front. The back of the waistband was made up in the same fabric as the rest of the skirt.
The polyester fabric is fairly thick on it's own, but has a rough, scratchy quality that really irritates my skin. To make the skirt wearable, I lined it with some lilac acetate-type fabric I'd got of eBay. It's finished with a metal-toothed zipper rescued from a pair of the Manbacon's unwanted trousers, and 2 little hook-and-eyes to close off the waistband. (The hook-and-eyes were another awesome op-shop bargain - a whole spaghetti sauce jar of them - sans spaghetti sauce, of course - for the princely sum of 50p!)
Of course, as soon as I got it all finished and photographed, the weather became much too warm for me to wear a fully lined, thick polyester skirt, and all I want to do these days is to swan around in floaty summer skirts.
Beautiful!
ReplyDeleteThank you :)
ReplyDeleteLove the leatherlook.
ReplyDelete