Make like Maria

I am a great believer in thrifty sewing!  That might be by necessity rather than by choice, but I can never pass up free fabric.  After years now of being wife to first a theology student, then curate, then vicar (all the same person in case that wasn't obvious!) I have learnt a lot about frugal living.   Even now, whilst I love sewing, I couldn't allocate myself a big budget for it.  Afterall, it's not as if I'd be out buying myself clothes all the time if I wasn't making them myself.

So, on to a bit of fabric repurposing Sound of Music style, and of course, it's another Moss skirt.  The fabric is from an IKEA curtain.   I bought these curtains about 6 years ago and, being super long as is always the case with IKEA curtains, I had a fair bit of yardage left over as offcuts.  I've used this material for all sorts of things, including William's bed tidy.  Since then I've shortened the curtain (more offcuts) and now have retired them completely (yet more surplus fabric) so I still have lots left for other projects.  I think the fabric is possibly cotton twill, although I'm just guessing really.  It's medium weight with a diagonal weave on the right side.  The colour is an odd slightly greenish blue, almost petrol blue but not quite.  This means it doesn't go with everything like my denim Moss, and I have to be careful what I wear it with or I end up looking like a clown!

Construction was straight forward again, except for a couple of stupid errors on my part!  I managed to sew the waistband facing on upside down and didn't realise until after I had graded all the seams and trimmed and turned the corners, etc!  Doh!  However, rather than unpick it all and cut a new facing I decided to just force it and iron it into submission!  There are just some points in a sewing project when unpicking would break the spirit!  Anyway, it seemed to do the trick and now the error isn't noticeable at all - phew!

I used a lovely floral cotton for the hem band facing and pockets.  This is doubly special as it came from an unfinished sewing project that my mum passed on to me.  I briefly considered finishing the skirt she had started, but decided I probably wouldn't wear it as was and would get more pleasure out of it by using it to make the inside of my Moss skirt beautiful instead.

I bound all the seams again with bias binding.  I'm working my way through a stash of vintage bindings bought on ebay.  I love the way this looks, and the skirt will last longer without any raw edges to fray.

I altered the sizing a little from my last version.  I now have a complex mix of sizes that seems to work for me.  I graded the front pieces from a 14 waist to a 12 hip, with a 16 length.  The back pieces I cut as a 15 (!) with a 16 length.  In the end I did unpick the side seams up to the hip and sew them with a smaller seam allowance as, due to the lack of stretch in the fabric, I felt I needed a little more width in the skirt.  I think next time I may cut a 12 or 14 length when adding a hem band just to reduce the length slightly.

So, all in all this one will be another workhorse in my everyday wardrobe.  Hooray for the mummy uniform!

Oh, and as a little blog bonus here are some photos of my husband mocking me for my blog photo posing...

I think he just wanted to get onto the blog!