Flora and Fauna The Monthly Stitch February Challenge

This skirt is a catalogue of disasters.

I bought this fabric probably 3-4 years ago. Long before I started the blog anyway so possibly you could say this was the beginning of my fabric stash. At the time I did not have ANY fabric at all and hardly sewed anything. I had though recently made my first bugs dress. So there I was in Ikea Bargain Basement and I got tempted by these two bags of fabric. In each bag there were 3 pieces and it said on the label they were 1.0 -1.5m long. At just £5 each bag that was a serious bargain. Except when I got home each piece was actually only half of the normal width so really I was ripped off. I could have taken them back but I live over 20 miles away from my Ikea store and it would have cost me nearly as much in fuel to go there and back to take them back so would not have achieved anything really so I kept it. This is the first piece I have found a use for. Its lovely heavy weight cotton – almost canvas. Meant probably for curtains. I think these were bits used in their in-store displays but other than the smallness widthwise they are in perfect condition.

Well its such a small bit – this one was just about 1.5m long and as I said half the normal width, so squeezing this skirt out was still not easy despite it not needing much fabric. So there are some serious faults with pattern matching which were completely unavoidable. I did not have much left over as you can see this is all I have left:

I had to use two pieces to make the waistband, since there was nothing left long enough after I cut the skirt bits so the waistband has a seam down one side. It does not matter.

I cut this out using the Toile pattern 1.1 which I used recently for this velvet skirt.

The toile pattern is still free at the moment. To get it you need to register. https://sewingtidbits.com/2015/03/20/open-skirt-project-final-sample-in-floral/

This time though I went up a size since the velvet skirt is very tight.

I missed out the back darts completely and “fittted” the skirt to me after construction – before the waistband being attached. To take in the excess I added two front pleats so its kind of a tulip skirt.

This version has a back zip and back vent but again is shorter than the pattern intends. I kept the back vent on this one and since its unlined I kind of just bodged the back. I bagged out the vent which worked great but could not work out how to do the hem without either spending ages hand sewing (not my thing) or topstitching so in the end its probaly a bit unusual in being bagged, topstitched and also I topstitched round the vent as well to reinforce it. Doesn’t matter. By the time I got to this point I no longer cared due to lots of problems. So I broke all the “rules” with this but it seems to work.

I spent ages checking my automatic buttonhole worked ok only to have it jam and cock up on the actual proper one so its very rubbish and in the wrong position.

I put the waistband on upside down and ended up redoing that 3 times. I never put interfacing in the waistband either! I did find a nice button from my Great Aunties stash though so am pleased with that.

Despite the un-matched print I am still reasonably happy with this for several reasons:

• It fits the theme of this months TMS challenge
• I finally found a use for my Ikea rip-off stash
• It will be wearable for work which works with my January sewing aims
• And to top it off, it gives me a new spring skirt, giving me something seasonal which usually I am rubbish at. Generally the season is half-way through before I manage to sew something for it, so all in all a success I think.

If you were wondering, I also made the top  I am wearing. 

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave comments,

Bracken