Skirt!

After weeks of being far too busy to do anything, finally a little time to work on Olivia's skirt.  She's nearly done now - and in fact, it's wearable, though she'd like to add a row of buttons down the front middle for effect. 

A bit more skirt

Olivia worked on her skirt today. She did the dart, the side seams and the zip.  Next step, the waistband; then it's just the hemming to go.  Probably won't get a chance to work tomorrow, but who knows.  

I found this pattern really frustrating - even though it's easy to stitch, the measurements seem really off; according to the size chart, for Olivia's waist measurement she should make the UK12 (despite usually wearing an 8 or sometimes 10); when we cut out and assembled the 12, it's (not surprisingly) way too big in the waist! We were able to adjust by increasing the darts and taking in the side seams a bit, but why is it so wrong? Weird.

A spot of dress- (well, skirt-) making

Way back at the end of the summer, Olivia picked out the (very simple) pattern for a straight skirt, and some fabric. We are finally getting a chance to have a go at cutting it out - between her busy weekends doing things like the Duke of Edinburgh Challenge and my being away looking at universities with Sarah, etc, neither of us has really had time before now. Luckily, it's a very simple pattern: four pattern pieces (plus interfacing) and a normal set zip, so it shouldn't take long to assemble, even for a beginner. 

Elvis has(n't) left the building...

Among today's sewing, was altering this skirt - it came home from the charity shop with us a few weeks back - who could resist this fabric!  It started life as a dress, but even my very slim daughter Olivia (who is even slimmer than Sarah, pictured below) couldn't do it up above the waist (the waist fit fine), despite it being theoretically the right size. Anyway, there wasn't a lot of fabric in the top of the dress - it was sleeveless - but I figured there was enough to make a waistband and stick some elastic in. I could have added a zip, but it would have lost some more length, and we wanted to keep it as long as possible. Also, the girls are not quite the same size, so a skirt with an elasticated waist would fit both of them, whereas a zipped one might not. 

Alterations

Did a little sewing today, but only a few alterations - this Indian shirt which my mom gave to Sarah, but which was too long for Sarah to use lost about 10 inches from the bottom hem - no other changes. 

You can see just how long it was on her before - it looked nice, but she didn't think she'd ever wear it long, whereas at a shorter length, she might wear it sometimes.

And this top, which I bought the other day for myself, looks lovely except for some odd reason, it had elasticated sleeves, which in addition to looking odd, were very uncomfortable.

 However, I knew it would only be a matter of minutes to chop them off and hem them into proper sleeves.

And indeed, it took me nearly more time to find and wind the right colour thread for the bobbin!

(photo a bit washed out - colour is more true in the other photo)

Skirt, part III

And at the end of Day 3, we had some of this!

Of course, this was preceeded by a bit of this:

It works. It's a nice, simple skirt, which doesn't match any of the t-shirts which Olivia brought to the US with her...

In the end, she borrowed one from Grandma which works a bit better (though it's too big - the colour is good, though). 

Skirt, part II

Today, we made the waistband, lock-stitched the edges of the skirt so the inside seams wouldn't fray, ran the gathering stitches along the top edges of front and back of the skirt

and actually pulled the gathers in for the front of the skirt and stitched the waistband on (shown folded over here, so it looks finished).  

Tomorrow, we will gather and add the waistband to the back for certain, and possibly more - I think we're having a quiet day at home, so there should be plenty of time to sew, and it's an easy skirt to make.  I am only doing a little of the work, mainly just demonstrating (so, for instance, I zigzagged one of the four edges, and sewed half of the first gathering stitch row) - Olivia is doing most of it.  It's quite slow going for a garment this easy, but that's because I'm making her read each step first and then making sure she understands what it's telling her to do - hopefully this will stand her in good stead in future if she wants to make something else!  I've already spotted a piece of fabric in the stash that my mother is getting rid of which I think would make a cute skirt if this one works out...

Skirt, part I

After ironing the pattern, Olivia carefully cut out all of the pieces (I say "all" - there are only 4 pieces to the skirt, which is partly why we chose it as a first dressmaking pattern).  She'll have to cut out a piece of interfacing tomorrow, but we didn't have that in the house this morning, so we couldn't do it at the same time.

Then she pinned the pattern pieces on to the folded fabric

And cut out the fabric (and labelled it carefully). Tomorrow (or perhaps Thursday, depending on our plans), we'll start the actual sewing.

A summery skirt project

We had a little trip to JoAnn's today - amazingly enough, I didn't even look at quilting stuff (though I will, later in my trip - but my mother is clearing out her fabric stash, so I want to look at what she has before I bother to buy anything...).  The main point of the trip was that Olivia wants to try making a skirt (with some help from me, of course) and as my mother has a sewing machine and we have lots of time, this seemed like a good chance to do so. We chose an easy pattern and a cute fabric, though my mother thought she had fusible interfacing in the house and she doesn't, so we'll need to nip back before we can put the skirt together, though we could get started on it tomorrow...  I'll keep you posted!

Yes, a few other bits and pieces may have slipped into my basket as well...