I love wool skirts for winter, I have often made straight skirts but a few years ago in 2022 I made a softly pleated skirt with Vogue pattern 9090. According to my blog post it was already the third time I’d used this pattern. The picture on the front of the pattern isn’t very inspiring but it’s a lovely skirt to wear. To my surprise it’s also had several compliments from complete strangers! When I mentioned this to my daughter she informed me that long tweed skirts are very in at the moment. They do say if you wait long enough everything comes back into fashion! Here I am back in 2022…

We are lucky here as Abraham Moon has it’s mill in the next town and they have a Mill shop, it’s beautiful tweed, used in many high end fashion shops. Usually even in the mill shop it’s £20 a metre but Helen and I went in once and they had a pile of rolls at £5 a metre – we went home with our arms full!! I decided to make Vogue 9090 in one of the tweeds. I chose a gorgeous dark blue one which has a fine reddish check in it too, very subtle but it’s there.

I cut out the longer length as I do like my skirts long, at least mid calf. I only just squeezed the pattern pieces onto my 2m of wool, though in the end I trimmed 2″ off the bottom as even for me it was long!. I went down a size as the skirt above is a bit big, I lost weight a couple of years ago and whilst it still fits it does sit lower than it should.

I used a jacquard lining fabric both for the inside of the waistband and also one side of the pockets.As a pattern it goes together really easily, I hand stitched the zip in, which I find easier and neater than machine stitching. I used my overlocker to finish all the raw edges and for the hem I used a length of bias binding rather than turning the tweed twice. The bias helps reduce the bulk of the hem and also looks nice and neat.

I’ve got a reunion lunch on Saturday with the girls I trained as a nurse with back in the 1980’s, it’s down in London so I’m just going for the day on the train. I think I’ll wear my new skirt.