Measure twice cut once should be on a big sign in my sewing room…

Yesterday was Friday Night Sew In over on Sugar Lane Designs I decided to finish off an outfit I’ve been making this week for our holiday, we’re going on a big holiday on New Year’s Eve, very excited!!

I decided I needed more tops so I chose one of the cottons I bought in the autumn on Goldhawk Road. It’s an embroidered cotton, very pretty, it’s 60″ wide and was about £3 a metre, so I got about 2.5m! I chose McCall’s pattern 6932 which is a standard shirt pattern but it also had a rather nice sleeveless longer length shirt. It is a ‘perfect fit pattern’, I did check my bust measurement and 35″ meant small size. I have to confess I didn’t check   my hips…well it’s a loose fitting shirt!!!

It made up beautifully, until I tried it on…my bum is too big!!! Rescue time…I decided to cut it off just below waist level (where it started getting too small) add a lace insert, then stitch a new bottom!

Having cut off the bottom with my rotary cutter I decided I rather liked the shorter length! I found a length of what I would call faggotting ribbon, I’ve had it years- it was left over from a dress I made my daughter when she was two, she’s now 17! I stitched it to the bottom, added a 2 1/2″ wide strip which I then folded in half and hand-stitched to the back of the ribbon to make the hem. The flower buttons were 6 pence each from Yorkshire Trading in Otley, I’ve actually used them back to front as I preferred the plain back! Next time I will spend more time following the instructions to get that perfect fit…

The second item I finished was a skirt, again the fabric was from Goldhawk Road, I wasn’t sure when I bought it if it was a very fine cotton or silk, the gentleman in the shop couldn’t give me a clear answer, at £10 a metre it could have been either. Having brought it home and sewn with it, it is definitely silk, look at it and it frays!! It’s a beautiful purple, fading subtly from deep purple to almost mauve, my daughter says its called ombre fabric! It’s gorgeous, that’s all I know!

My original plan was to make a wrap skirt as I wanted to use the fading as much as possible, having looked at various tutorials on the internet I decided I didn’t have quite enough fabric. I decide to make a maxi dirndl skirt, I used to make loads of skirts this way when I was younger and it turned out to be a good choice as there was only one seam!

Zip and hem showing colour difference

I cut 3 1/2″ off the dark selvage side to make the waistband. I added 2 1/2″ to my waist measurement (measuring twice!!) to allow for seam allowances and a tab for the fastener. I pondered for quite a while about the centre back seam as the weft in particular frayed really badly. Ideally it needed a French seam but that makes putting a zip above difficult. I tried zigzagging the edges but that became quite hard and bulky. I decided to make a feature of it, I stitched the seam then turned under each side before topstitching down each side. I then used the line of topstitching to hide the hand-stitching as I put the zip in.

I wanted to keep as much of the ombre effect as I could so I hand-stitched a 2″ hem and then added four 1″tucks, each one covering the stitching line of the one below, I basically added the tucks until it was the length I wanted.

I’m really pleased with it, it feels lovely to wear.

Oscar getting in on the photo!