Completed: The Charlotte Skirt

I always keep an on-going list of wardrobe staples (Cake, if you will) that I would like to get my sew on with. Knit dresses, a lightweight denim skirt, that cycling jacket, red straight-leg trousers (Sunni, I love you but I REALLY love your pants and I’m going to copy you aaand I hope that’s ok!), white tshirts… to name a few. One of the pieces that’s been on the list for the very longest was a red pencil skirt. I dunno why I’ve put this off for so long – red is basically a neutral as far as I’m concerned, and my wardrobe is quite lacking in pencil skirts these days. Sewing boring clothes can be, well, boring – but ain’t nothing boring about a handmade staple that gets the hell worn out of it all the time, amirite.

I did finally make that red pencil skirt, though.

This is the Charlotte skirt I was telling y’all about last week. It’s generously sized through the hips, so those of us whose hips don’t lie can still rock our pencil skirts with minimal size futzing and fretting. It’s like, living the dream. Oh yeah.

I went with the plain jane, no frills view as I really just wanted a plain ol’ red pencil skirt. I based my sizing experience off the Elisalex dress and cut a 6/10, which ended up being quite a bit too big and needed some shaving down the sides. Now that I’m looking at the pictures, I might need to adjust the darts for future skirts are there is definitely some slack chilling at the front. DAMMIT. It really doesn’t look that obvious in real life.

This is a very simple pattern to construct – there are only 3 pieces! I did make a few changes – shortened the hem by several inches (I think around 4″? Ladies, watch your petite selves – this skirt is long!), added a 4″ slit for walkability, and dropped in a full lining. Adding the lining was SUPER easy, by the way – I just cut out an extra front and back piece from the lining, sewed the darts and side seams as normal, and then dropped it in the shell of the skirt before attaching the waistband. As the skirt is wool (from the flea market, yeah!), it’s limited to winter wear which means tights – which means lining is a necessity.

I did have a little snafu with the sizing, once I put the waistband in. And by “little snafu,” I mean the skirt was too damn small and it measured out to like 2″ smaller than my actual waist measurement. WTF?! Fortunately, my zipper had giant seam allowances just hiding beneath the lining – as well as the waistband having a nice generous overlap for snaps – so 15 minutes of quality time with my seam ripper meant the skirt was saved. !!!

It does have a nice rear view.
Shit, I hope I don’t attract the Flickr weirdos with this picture.

It seems I have run out of things to say. Here is an artsy photograph for your consideration.

What’s on your staples-to-sew list?

Completed: the Elisalex Dress

I know I’m SUPER late to the dance party on this, but I just looooove the new goods from my girls over at By Hand London. A pencil skirt with generous ease at the hips?? That made me sit straight up and divert all my attention at once (a feat on it’s own!). So when I was offered to try my hand at the patterns, I responded with an enthusiastic “UHM YES PLEASE!!” and was immeditely given my very own hourglassy pencil skirt pattern of dreams, as long as the Elisalex dress pattern.

I’m going to fully disclose here and let y’all know that I’ve actually been working on this pattern for over a month – we got off to a very rocky start, unfortunately. My first problem stemmed when I couldn’t find any finished measurements listed anywhere in the pattern, and for some reason I had a huge issue with measuring the pieces (which is not the fault of the pattern, I was just basically being a dumbass. It happens.). Once I got the sizing sorted out, the muslin I whipped up gave me the biggest hunchback that you ever did see. Just… oh my god, it looked like I had a growth back there HAHA. I had to cut quite a bit off the center back to get a snug fit – about 1.5″ per side. I hesitate to blame this back on BH, as I’ve seen a few of these dresses in the wild west (aka, internet) and no one has mentioned the size of the back, which would indicate that this is a Lauren-fitting problem, not a poor drafting issue. Happily, the rest of the bodice muslin looked fine, so I cut my fabric, cranked up the music, and started assembling the dress.

Oh, the fabric, by the way. Isn’t it AMAZING!? It was a (super sweet and incredibly thoughtful!)gift from my homegirl Erin of Miss Crayola Creepy. She bought a bunch of this stuff at the LA Garment District, apparently it’s ~Prada~ ooohhh!! Don’t worry, she kept some of it for herself – you can see what she made with it here. I’ve been sitting on this fabric for foreeeeever, just waiting for the perfect pattern to come up. With the marriage of the Elisalex and the dreamy Prada floral twill, I thought I had it made. I HAD IT MADE.

But you know what? That tulip skirt, as beautiful as it is – it really sucks with this drapey, stretchy fabric. Ask me how I know. Wait, no, I’ll tell you. It droops and sags and it looks like a shit sack made out of beautiful fabric. There’s a reason they tell you to use a weighty fabric to make this dress – the skirt needs the structure for those beautiful pleats. I had done goofed, again. Sooooo I threw the bodice on my dressform and gave up for about a month. Womp womp.

I finally pulled the UFO off my dressform last week and decided it was time to asses the situation – normally, I’d throw in the towel at this point, but considering both the fabric and the pattern were given to me with wonderful intentions, I thought it was pretty shitty to just toss them out. So I made it work. I scrapped the droopy skirt and traded it for a circle skirt – I had to shorten it a little to get it to fit on the rest of my fabric, but it works! I sewed some 2″ horsehair braid at the hem to give it some lift and combat any potential droopiness. And then I spent like 3 days handsewing the the lining and hem, bc, FUCK, there is a lot of handsewing involved.

It was worth it, I think

The finished size ended up being a 6 at the hips/shoulders, grading out to an 8 at the bust. I didn’t bother with a FBA, I think the fit is fine. In the future, I need to lengthen the bodice as it is a bit short on me and hits at a kind of frumpy place… hence the belt.

The back is my favorite part! Love love LOVE that V detail- so pretty!

Here it is without the belt. See what I mean about it being a hair short? It kind of makes me look like a box. A beautiful autumn box (perhaps full of Pumpkin Spice Lattes, mm)

I added a little bit of trim around the neckline and the sleeves as well, to help break up the pattern a bit.

Oh, and I subbed out the exposed zip in favor of an invisible one! Mostly because I really wanted to try out my new Bernina invisible zipper foot This fabric did NOT like that invisible zipper – it bunched up soo bad, and I had to rip it out several times. The mess you see right now was the best attempt I managed, haha!

LOVE ME A GOOD CIRCLE SKIRT.

Neon yellow Bemberg rayon lining, courtesy of my remnant hoarding

This dress is quite comfortable and well-suited for those of us who like to be a bit active, see:

Great for kicking at the cat when she tries to get in the picture frame

Trying to pull the cat out from under the desk because you know she’s totally giving the camera the evil eye and could quite possibly be scaring small children

WHAT’S THE MATTER, Y U NO WANT CUDDLEZ

Aw, so sweet!

Nope, nevermind.

In closing: Elisalex is a YAY, just make sure you muslin that baby out first if you are prone to hunchbackness And yes, I have plans for that Charlotte skirt! Just you wait and see!