Spring Skirt

I found this amazing fabric on sale at Joann's a few months ago and thought it would make a really cute spring skirt.  I used this Cynthia Rowley pattern for Simplicity--it has a nice high, defined waist and pockets (although now that I found this tutorial I can add pockets to anything!)

This was my first use of an invisible zipper and I didn't really understand the instructions so kind of messed it up (instead of it being completely invisible you can see the stitching around the sides).  But that's ok--the pattern is so busy you really don't notice.  Also if you look closely in the back the two sides don't line up--oops!

From cutting to finishing the skirt only took me a couple of hours--its so cute and easy I'm sure I'll make more, although maybe with a bit less volume.

I also wanted to share some better pictures of the first skirt I made:

 

Very Poofy Skirt

I finally had time to make my elastic waist skirt with my purl fabric this weekend.  I'm fairly happy with how it turned out, but I'm still trying to get the poofiness to go down!  I got really in to it and didn't take any pictures during the process but check out the great tutorial I used from Freshly Picked.  The only change I made was to cover up the elastic, like this J.Crew skirt:

 

I made the skirt more or less following the tutorial directions but instead of sewing the fabric to the elastic I folded the top over to create a pocket for the 2 inch wide elastic.  Looking back I really should have just placed the elastic and then folded the fabric over and sewn, but I decided to create the pocket first and then string the elastic through, which was of course time consuming and frustrating.  But in the end it worked.

I had to line the skirt, and I did so once the rest was finished.  I just sewed the 2 vertical sides of lining fabric together and then sewed them to the skirt at the top, right at the bottom of the elastic pocket.  The pockets are between the blue fabric and the lining (I checked some of my other dresses/skirts with pockets and this was the most common way of doing pockets and lining).

The skirt started out very poofy and I've been pressing and ironing to calm it down a bit.  I like some poofiness but it felt a bit like a tutu at first!  If I were to make this again (which I'm sure I will it was so simple!) I think I would use 1.5 times the length of elastic for the fabric, instead of 2 times as suggested in the tutorial.  I'm so happy that I finally know how to make pockets...it's really quite simple and I will now be putting them in all of my creations.

Marc Jacobs-inspired Rosette Jersey Skirt

 

I love this skirt!  It was really simple to make: the only time-consuming part was making the flowers and even that was made easier by the fact that everything is jersey, so you don't have to finish anything!  I used a heavy weight jersey for the skirt itself since I wanted it to be warm enough to wear this winter, and a light jersey for the flowers, so they were easy to sew.  The only real problem I ran in to had to do with the shape of the skirt, and that was easily fixed.

I started by cutting 3 rectangles: 1 for the body and 2 for the top and bottom.  Here was where I messed up: I didn't think about the fact that I didn't want the skirt to be the same width at the waist as as the bottom.  As you can see in the actual picture it's more of an A-line, although a slight one.

To fix my mistake I ended up adding a triangular panel in the back that added about 6" to the bottom hem, but kept the top the same width.  Here's what it looked like when I was getting ready to attach it to the rectangular panel:

This problem could have been avoided if I'd stopped to think and either a) cut a large rectangle as wide as the bottom needed to be or b) cut a trapezoid.  But this worked just fine and you don't really notice the back panel.

Here were the final measurements for my 3 main pieces:
Body panel: 36"x15" plus triangle 6"x15"
Top piece: 36"x5"
Bottom piece: 42"x5"

Next it was time to ruffle and pin and sew and ruffle and pin and sew...35 flowers total!!!  I cut the strips 24" long and about 1/2"-3/4" wide.  I didn't worry about them all being exactly the same thickness or exactly the same length once ruffled.  Once the strips were ruffled I pinned them to the skirt, using as many pins as possible to keep them in place while I sewed them on.

 

This part was definitely slow going.  I would recommend putting the rosettes as close together as possible...touching or almost overlapping.  I left a small space between each of mine and when the skirt is on it stretches and they're further apart.

Once all of the rosettes has been sewed on came the easy final steps: attaching the bottom and top.  I couldn't tell on the original but I thought that they looked thicker so I decided to fold the fabric in half and have strips of about 2 inches (although after trying them on once pinning I preferred a slightly smaller piece on the bottom, about 1.5").  This also had the added advantage of not having to do any hems!  I just folded the long piece in half lengthwise (wrong sides together) laid them on the body of the skirt (right sides together) sewed together with a stretch stitch and trimmed off any extra!  Finally I folded the skirt in half (right sides together) and stitched up the last hem--I just used a straight stitch for this since the skirt won't be stretching lengthwise.

A word about working with stretch fabrics: think long and hard before you cut about which way the skirt will be stretching.  Twice I cut too soon only to realize that the fabric was stretching lengthwise, not along the width as I wanted it to.  I'm sure this is something you get the hang of the more you work with fabrics like jersey but I'm not quite there yet.

I can't wait for the "warm" weather this week (45 degrees!) to wear my new skirt!

 

Update: After pressing the hems I realized that the waist of this skirt is way too big.  The flowers make the skirt fairly heavy so you need a pretty tight waist (using the jersey's natural stretch) to hold it up well.  I'll do some re-hemming of the back hem or maybe some darts tonight to fix it.

Up next: Joann's just had a huge sale and I got a bunch of patters and fabrics--more spring/summer appropriate but it'll get warmer soon, right?  I also have another shirt makeover in the works that should be up soon.