Apologies for the silly photo. Again, I had to behead myself in the interests of not appearing as a total crazy lady and scaring you all away.
Interfacing is becoming a bit of a bugbear of mine. I hate fusible interfacing - it always seems to shrink differently to the main fabric, and creates a messy wrinkled look. And the drape it gives is a bit stiff yet floppy, if you know what I mean. Probably this is all down to my inferior interfacing skills, but nonetheless, I hate it.
And so, in an effort to move away from fusible interfacing I... ermm... forgot to interface any part of this skirt whatsoever. I was planning on using some stiff-ish organic cotton I have kicking around to interface the waistband and button placket, but realised as I sewed the buttonholes that I had completely failed to do so.
Unfortunately this denim is reasonably soft, so the result is a button placket that drags at each buttonhole, as the fabric isn't rigid enough. Ho hum.
But aside from that, I'm rather pleased with this skirt, especially as it marks my first ever effort at any sort of pattern manipulation beyond moving a seam inwards or outward half an inch. I used the pattern from Sew U (great book, well worth a purchase as a startig point to realising that actually you can play around with patterns), adding a button placket (I might do a tutorial on that - it's really not hard). In another first, I also finished the seams with bias binding. It looks seriously amazing. My technique was rubbish (once I've had another couple of goes I might even manage a tutorial on that too), but even so it looks lovely, and really makes the inside of the skirt rather pretty. Because, you know, that's important.
Project notes - A Sew U skirt with pockets
- Pattern from Sew U by Wendy Mullin, with the addition of pockets, the removal of the back zip and the addition of a button placket down the front. Easy peasy.
- I sewed a size 12, in a soft denim, which I think is organic. I've had it for ages
- I finished the edges with some single fold Liberty print bias binding. I'll be listing some more of it in my shop soon - I don't think there's any there at the moment. I didn't do a remotely good job, but am totally addicted and will be finishing more seams like this in future.
- The skirt is a little bit, ahem, snug around the hips and baggy on the waist, because I wasn't confident enough in my adjustments. Lesson learned - believe it when the tape measure tells you to adjust something by four inches one way and three inches another!
- As I mentioned, I forgot to interface the button placket and waistband. And my gosh does it show after a few hours wear. The buttonholes start to gape a bit (aforementioned snugness not helping this) and the waistband flops a bit. No huge drama, but I'll definitely be fixing this in round two.
- I chopped a few inches off the length of the pattern. I'm not sure how much, but I'm pleased with the length I ended up with. Not too mini, not too frumpy.
- I think I might make this again, in heavier denim, with interfacing (of the sew in variety) in the appropriate places.
- I'd like to tell you that the mismatched buttons are an important style choice. Actually I didn't have enough buttons that matched and I'm too cheap to buy more. I think next time I make this I might cover some buttons in Liberty fabric. Yum.
