Back at the beginning of May, around a week after I began this blog and vowed to sew myself an Autumn/Winter wardrobe, I signed up for Cam’s Make it in May skirt sew along. I was full of enthusiasm and saw myself at the end of the month with not one but several finished skirts. Ha! An increase in orders for my hobby store saw me churning out crayon rolls, not skirts.

I did finish a skirt though. I began a few days before the deadline and hemmed it around 3pm yesterday which put me to the finish line.. just. Here is Simplicity 2154 from their 1960’s retro collection.

The skirt is made from an Alannah Hill remnant that’s been sitting the the stash for quilt a number of years. I suspect it’s wool, or has wool content as it’s quite scratchy on the skin. It was tricky to show it’s true colours, the photo of the zip is the most accurate.

An exciting addition to my sewing room just in time for this skirt is my  dressmakers dummy. I purchased a new machine a week ago and while I was in the shop I noticed the dummy on sale and couldn’t resist. I cut a size 16 for this skirt to allow for my thick waist, knowing there’d be fitting problems in the hips.

There were a few small issues while putting this together; firstly I didn’t bother to read the instructions and it wasn’t until the side seams were well and truly sewn that I realised that this skirt has a side zipper. As expected it was huge in the hip area on first fitting and I took each seam in over an inch to get the fit right, although it could have come in more to create a better pencil skirt line. When it came time to do the hem I opted to shorten the skirt as it was sitting just below the knee which looks quite dowdy on me.

On the plus side; it does fit, it’s wearable and I inserted my best invisible zip yet! I purchased a Janome invisible zip foot with my machine and it makes all the difference. Prior to now I’d been using the plastic Birch foot. So hooray for completing my skirt on time and adding to my Winter wardrobe!