Clothes for me!

In between making stock for my upcoming show/sale and sewing for birthday and other gifts, I took some time to craft a few more wardrobe essentials for myself. Like the giraffe bubble skirt you see above. Essential, right?!?

I can't fully explain how much I adore this skirt. It is so. much. awesome. in such a small package. The giraffes! The hem! The overall foofiness of the shape! LOVE.

Okay, the details: The outer skirt is cut using my go-to self-drafted full skirt pattern (side note: I just realized that I mentioned the giraffe bubble skirt in that post! It only took me a year to get around to actually making it...). The lining is cut using my self-drafted A-line skirt pattern (all of which I learned from Cal Patch's book, which I can't recommend enough!). The assembly was kind of done on the fly. I'm starting to realize that I'm understanding garment construction much better these days, and it a really fantastic, I-just-know-what-to-do-and-don't-have-to-really-think-about-it kinda way. So when I knew I wanted to make a bubble skirt, I made my A-line, chopped about 4" off the hem, attached the gathered outer hem, and then attached the layers at the waistband. I added little snaps to hold the overlapping waistband in place, and hand-stitched the lining to the invisible zip (I'm starting to figure those out too--yay!) on the inside. The lining is leftover from my birthday dress and is really lightweight (I think cotton lawn), so even though the outer fabric is quilting-weight cotton, the skirt is not too heavy.

I also made this flora skirt using the A-line pattern I drafted from the Cal Patch book. I drafted the pattern a year ago and only just now put together a skirt from it, and it's actually a little big. I need to make another muslin and possibly re-draft the waist a bit. (I don't think this means I've lost weight, though, maybe just that it was really hot when I made my first muslin?) I put the pockets too close to the center / too far away from the hip seam, but I think this skirt is fine for a first try. I'm definitely wearing it!

Last is not a new skirt but a bit of an update. I originally blogged this fishy skirt here, but only just got around to adding the contrast stitching. Now that I look at the before and after pictures, I'm really glad I did it--I think it adds a lot. Plus it only took me like 2 episodes of Law & Order on a Saturday morning to do it all.