Beige Striped Skirt

I don't know about everyone else, but my fabric stash is overwhelmingly huge. What I keep in the cupboard hardly fits in there, and it's expanded to my bedroom and a second cupboard. I had the day off (Yay! Summer math classes are over! My inner nerd is crying, but now I have all the time in the world for sewing!) so I went hunting through the cupboard for something to do. After spending an hour trying to fix a project I'd messed up a while ago, I went back to the cupboard and found this fabric (Fabric Outlet, 40% off sale probably). And remembered that I've been meaning to make a half-circle skirt pattern. And realized this fabric would be perfect. And thought, why the heck not?

10 minutes later (why I love circle skirts: they're so fast!) I had a pattern and was cutting it out. I made a waistband out of some leftover fabric and put some elastic in. 

I did have to make some adjustments to the back seam, so the pattern wasn't perfect. I think that next time I make it, I'm not going to cut it on the fold, but instead do it in two pieces with side seams. 

AND, the fabric is slightly see-through! Again! Freaking again! Why does this keep happening to me?!

Anywho, stay in touch readers. I think a black circle skirt is in order after my dog clawed up the last one....

-Taft W-K

P.S. I did end up making a black circle skirt, but I made it too long, cut it and now it's too short. *sigh* Maybe one day I'll get this right...

White Maxi Skirt

I just loooooove maxi skirts! They're soft, fun to wear and so easy to quickly pull on in the morning when you slept in and are late for school (Who? What? Late for school? Psshhh, not me....). I made yet another maxi skirt from my favorite Alabama Chanin Pattern (here's one from last summer) out of this really cool white polka-dot tissue knit I picked up at Fabric Outlet (during a 40% off sale, of course!). 

The tissue knit was see through, so I made a little skirt with the Short Skirt pattern from the same book to go under it. The two are sewed together at the waistband.

The waistband is really basic, folded over with elastic. I sewing this one with a zig-zag stitch so it could stretch.

Technically, all the Alabama Chanin patterns are made to be hand-sewn, but I'm kind of a cheater. I normally machine stitch the inside seams, but fell them by hand. That way, you get the sturdiness of a garment sewn by hand, but can still see some beautiful hand stitching on the outside.

For this one, I didn't fell the seams because the fabric was reeeeaaallly stretchy and the straight, non-stretch running stitch would not have worked. At all.

The back is marked with some polka dot ribbon (Yay! Ribbon!) and a B, but that's in the magical fabric marker that disappears after being washed (Love it! Use it all the time!)

And here's the back, just for some closure:

As always, I chopped about 6 inches off the hem, plus the train, cause I definitely don't want white fabric dragging on the ground. 

Well, there ya go! I'm definitely going to be wearing this one often during SF's fall heat wave.

-Taft WK