a new outfitNEWLOOK 6108 Skirt & Kirsten Kimono Tee ~ again!

A new top and skirt have been made.

As you may recall, my August's "Make a Garment a Month" plans...

was to duplicate a favored rtw peasant skirt, photo below.....

....using NEWLOOK 6108 and the striped, gauzy fabric shown below.....

....using this photo as  inspiration for the stripe placement.....

....of which I made a skirt.

Did I succeed in 'copying' my rtw peasant skirt?  No.  My skirt looks nothing like a peasant skirt.

Do I love it?  A resounding YES!
This skirt was such fun to make!  I've made this pattern before and knew the fit, or so I thought... but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself a little here.  Using my size 10 pattern, traced and re-cut it out of thin interfacing, which has become my favorite medium to use when tracing patterns.  You can see in the photo below, I lengthened it 5". 

As I began to lay out the pattern on my fabric, I needed to take into consideration the stripe placement, so cut both front and back as one piece- no laying the pattern on the fold.  It was a simple procedure to match up both my pieces of pattern and as I cut, gently realign the longer one over the shorter one to cut that side.  Oh, but the thought process of the stripes gave my brain a workout!  I carefully made notes of exactly where on the stripe I began my cut, measuring my angle of the stripe so both front and back would align on the seam(s) and would have the same stripe angle.   Front, photo below....

Back, photo below.  As you can also see, each piece had to be cut in mirror images of each other.  Let's see how we did on the stripe placement.

Not bad. It's hard to see in the photo below, but the stripes, after careful pinning and slow sewing, matched perfectly at the seam.

Let's compare my skirt to my inspiration photo.

This is the look I was trying to achieve with the stripes.  On the opposite side, the stripes just kind of disappear into the seam.   Sorry my hand is in the way, photo below.    All seams are serged with the hem of both lining and skirt a 1/4" rolled hem.  Lining was cut from the original pattern piece, thus is @5" shorter than the skirt.

At this point, all was going well so forged ahead and attached the waist band to the top of the skirt, after already adding the lining, to find.... I could not.... get it over.... my hips..... at all!  I'd forgotten this pattern is for knits and my previous skirt I'd made was a knit!  What to do.... What to do...!  Proud of myself that I didn't spend too much time pondering (i.e. procrastinating) on this problem and quickly came up with a solution.  Picked the waistband off and sewed a 3/8" elastic right on the top of the skirt, as I knew I could get that part on, using the quartering the elastic with pins, then matching the pins with sides, front and back of skirt method.  Then turned down the elastic-sewn-to-the-top and tacked it in place on each side and love this look even better.  No waistband stripes to compete with the skirt stripes.  See how nice and clean it looks in the photo below.  I may need to tack it in a couple more inconspicuous places, but for now all stays tucked in pretty well.

Another view of the front.....

.....along with a view of the back.  Our chickens were so interested in the photo shoot this morning!  They kept peering out the side of their fenced-in yard to see what was going on.  They are very social.

The skirt fulfills my Make a Garment a Month Challenge for August and also fulfills August's theme of 'stash buster' as this fabric has been wanting to be made into a skirt since last year.

Now, let's turn briefly to the top.  Another Kirsten Kimono Tee.... my 4th... what can I say.... love 'em!!  The free pattern from MariaDenmark can be found here.  This is my modified version flaring a small at the top to a medium and narrowing the neck by 3/8".  This is a nubby, stretchy, soft creamy knit fabric that tricked me, just like the last one, with being sew through once I had it made, sans finishing the neckline and hem.  Lined it with a medium weight white jersey, serging the armholes together and turning in 1/2" treating as one fabric.   Top-stitched the neckline 1/2" as the jersey knit kept poking out. 

What is interesting about this skirt, is that it was supposed to be a casual-feeling, peasant skirt-ish, throw on to wear anywhere, kind of skirt.... and instead feels... 'nice'.   I wanted to wear it to the mountains this past weekend, knowing we'd be making some short hikes, but after putting it on to get ready to leave, it felt too 'nice', so it was switched out for another pleasant, casual-feeling skirt.  In contrast, this outfit was chosen to wear to church on Sunday, coupled with an unstructured chocolate brown rtw suede jacket, and it felt perfect.  So, I guess, this is now officially categorized into the 'nice skirt' section of my closet.

Wanted to leave you with a photo taken of something that gives this Southern girl great pleasure - ripening Muscadines on the vine.  Muscadines are the Grape of the South and make into the best jams and jellies, which is what I will be doing as soon as this post is published.  They are also delicious eating fresh off the vine.

Hope all is having a very good August day!