More sewing

My mom sent me a magazine in the mail called Stitches. It was the inaugural edition that came out last winter as a special issue from Quilting Arts. Actually, I bought the spring edition and loved it. It's kind of a hipster sewing magazine - lots of fashionable patterns for clothes and home goods. And pretty easy, too.

Well, the winter edition had patterns for 5 skirts (well, patterns for 3 skirts, pictures of 5), and I decided it was time for me to tackle a clothing pattern! It was hard. The patterns for all 3 were printed on one piece of paper, with sizes XS - XL. So there were lines EVERYWHERE!! I bought a tracing wheel and tracing paper, which is cool, cause you put the purple tracing paper under the pattern and trace over the pattern with a wheel and it transfers washable purple marks onto the fabric. What is challenging is the tracing paper is only 8x11, so you have to keep moving it under the pattern. And the pattern was also broken up on opposite sides of the sheet, so you have to match things and flip things, and it's confusing and I couldn't for the life of me get things to match up for my size. So I improvised!

I had some momentary panic when I cute out the pieces because when I pinned them together and to me, it was very tight. Since it was an A-line skirt, I simply cut off about 2" from the waist and moved it all up, and that seemed to help. I had to do more improvising when I started sewing because it was supposed to have darts on both front and back. I only put in the back to accomodate my booty. Yep, here's a picture of my backside. It's just I'm so proud of the darts! I even sewed in a side zipper! It's a little too visible, but not enough that I felt like ripping the seams and starting over. It was supposed to have 4 vertical pintuck seams on both front and back. I had to rip out several when I tried it on and it was still tight. So, it only has 3 vertical pin tuck seams on the front. And the skirt fits about perfectly!! I used brushed denim, so it's got a little give. I really love the assymetrical pintuck horizantal seams near the hem.