Week 7 - Mustard On My Skirt

"2 Hour Skirt" you say? More like 2 week skirt! Ok, so I made some major pattern adjustments and took my dear sweet time sewing up the details. Me and the seam ripper had a nice, long date. And I somehow managed to break my zipper twice. Twice! But enough of that, I'll get into the nitty-gritty details later. Right now, let's look at the results:




I can't have enough yellow in my closet so this skirt was an obvious choice!

I wound up combining two different views of this pattern. Here's a badly drawn sketch from the pattern envelope to give you a better idea of what I mean:

View 1 has box pleats, a waistband, and a side zip with button but no pockets. View 3 has gathers, an elastic waistband, and pockets. I wanted View 1 with pockets. As I constructed the skirt I quickly realized why the side-zippered version did not have pockets - the zipper is in the way. Duh! So, because full skirts with pockets just make me SO happy, I decided to convert the pattern to a center back zip. This wasn't too hard. I just cut down the center back and adjusted the pleats to make up for the lost room. I didn't have to change the waistband at all, I just had to rotate it to the back.

So all in all, everything went well except for the zipper. The only yellow invisible zippers JoAnn had were 22 inches so I had to cut it down to about 7 inches. I installed the zipper and then when I zipped it up the slider came all the way off! The next day I went back and bought another one, seam ripped the original, installed the new zip, and without even thinking I wound up doing the same thing again! I felt pretty stupid but I sure as hell wasn't going back to JoAnn at 10pm for a third zipper. I finally figured out a trick to get the slider back on and then immediately sat down at my machine and sewed new stops. I'm planning to do a tutorial on this trick later in the week, just in case this ever happens to someone else. I know from experience now that Google searching the issue doesn't turn up much helpful advice.

I actually went the "proper" route and hand sewed that hem you guys, I'm really proud of myself! And it wasn't hard at all. And I got to catch up on Parks and Recreation while hemming. Win!

I do really like this skirt and I'm planning to use my modified version of the pattern again. I don't think I will use this fabric again, however - especially for something with pleats that will be sat on most of the day. It creases like crazy! And I'm constantly fiddling with the pleats trying to make them lay just right. I think maybe I'm just a little hyper-vigilant about little things like this with the clothes I make. Can anyone else relate to this? I throw my store bought clothes into crumpled up heaps after wearing them but my handmade clothes get carefully folded and placed into a separate "hand wash" pile before doing laundry. It's pretty funny how much my attitude toward clothing changes after I've spent so much time working on making it!

Fabric - mustard yellow stretch poplin from JoAnn, bought many years ago
Pattern - Simplicity 9935, from stash
Notions - interfacing from stash, white and yellow polka dot cotton for the pockets from stash, plastic pearl shank button from an old dress
two yellow 22" invisible zippers (ha!) from JoAnn - $6
Total Cost - $6. Totally worth the money I spent on zippers.

And so ends my Spring Sewing Challenge. Even though I didn't meet most of my deadlines, I'm really looking forward to sewing in a less structured format. I like being able to take my time and enjoy the process, getting all the little details just the way I want them. So I will be posting garments less often, but I have plenty of other crafty projects on the way so it shouldn't get too quiet around here :)

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