My skirt fixation...version 1

I guess the best way to begin is to start posting my skirts - all of them! I've seen on various blogs - especially Handmade by Carolyn - about taking one thing that you've made and styling it six ways. Wow, what a great idea, I thought! But really, Cindy, could you pull that off?! Nope. But I can make a skirt six times, and show it in all the different fabrics and how very different it looks in six different fabrics! Hahaha! So, here I'll begin.

This is the skirt - Butterick 5466 - It's a straight skirt with nothing difficult about it. And it was the first skirt that I successfully made. Successfully is the operative word here. God it was a struggle! Am I that bizarrely shaped I asked myself many many times?! But, no, not as weird as I thought. Louise taught me (us, there were three of us) how to make a muslin that fit and how to finish the skirt with many couture features. I LOVED LOVED LOVED it!! The skirt AND the hand sewing! And I immediately got some more fabric (ok, it was in my stash all along...) that I really loved and made another.

Ok, the first - it's a SILK/COTTON in a gold and deep purple. At least that's the colour I see. Anyway I got it, and all the fabrics for this project, from Fabricland, surprisingly, since they rarely have any fabric that I would consider actually wearing. Snob, snob!! It was rather sheer so I underlined (my first time!) it in an equally sheer gold silk/cotton, and then lined it in a deep purpley Bemberg lining. Phew! Lotsa layers there! But look at the result! I'm so very very pleased with my first well fitted skirt. I really do not like a waistband on my very thick middle but I wanted to learn how to do it anyway. I must admit the waistband fit very well and I didn't hate it after all.

As for fitting, the skirt required only a modest amount of tweaking, mostly adding to the waist and cutting off the bottom, for my vertically-challenged body. The skirt had some hand sewing in it - a la
couture style - including the interfacing in the waistband (no fusible interfacing for MOI!), the hem, and the lining. We didn't learn how to make a vent or slit because Louise said that was a whole other ball game, but I didn't think it would have been such a big deal. But I actually didn't end up doing one till my third version - baby steps here!