Second day back

On my second day back to school work I wore a new uniform outfit that I'd finished making at the end of the school year before Christmas. Today promised to be hot, so it was perfect for wearing light summer work wear.



Going back to work - doesn't it make you feel like you should be sharpening your pencils and nuggetting your shoes the night before? Yeah - neither of those things happened here, either.

Yes, it's another Simplicity 2938 top. I'm not even going to talk about it, except to say it's a very light chocolate-coloured voile from Spotlight and I quite like it.

But the skirt is something different. I drafted it myself. It wasn't hard. A rectangle for the skirt, and another rectangle for the waist band. I made the waistband to fit perfectly around my waist, and then played the rest by ear. In this case, I pleated the skirt. By ear. And then put a zipper in the back seam. There are no side seams as I cut the fabric along the length rather than across the width.



The fabric is from Tessuti and I bought it online in early 2010 at the same time as I bought the White Flowers dress fabric. It is an embroidered cotton, and is very fine and floaty, except for the heavy embroidery which keeps it weighted down. I lined the skirt with a darker teal Bemsilk. Because I had no pattern I had to make up the lining as I went along as well. This whole skirt was made up as I went along. Let's be honest. But I think it kind of turned out OK.




Of course I did a hand-picked zipper because I love them and not because I'm obnoxious. Oh no.

Having worn a self-drafted skirt for a whole day now, I can say that I was generally pleased with how it wore. However I wish I had made fewer pleats and made those pleats a bit deeper. I ended up with a small bubble of fabric around the bum, as there wasn't quite enough deep pleating towards the back zipper. I guess that's the problem with wearing a non-shaped rectangular skirt.



My other mistake was running out of interfacing the day I made the waistband, and using that revolting stiff paper fusible interfacing out of a packet instead. It was in my stash. I have no other excuse for using it. It's not very forgiving, and as a result my skirt twisted around me all day meaning I was forever straightening it up. I think I've mentioned before that I have no feeling at all on the right side of my abdomen thanks to the surgery, so that may have contributed to the problem as I couldn't feel the skirt moving at all.

But really I'm happy with this outfit. It's very wearable, the cotton is perfect for a hot day at work and it looks good with red accessories. As a rule I don't wear chocolate brown as I find with my olive colouring and brown hair I tend to fade to invisibility while wearing it. But augmented with teal and red it seems to work OK for me.

For my next post I promise some quilting. Or cooking. I'm kind of over this dressmaking business for the time being.