On My Christmas Skirt and Blouse

My sewing elf

Final sewing post of the year! Over a year ago, I bought some beautiful green fabric with a gold poinsettia print and I refused to let this Christmas pass without using it.

Because I had about 5 yards of it there were a lot of options for what I could make, but I decided to go with a classic circle skirt with added benefit that it would go perfectly with a red blouse I had started making last month.

 

This skirt pattern is one I had made before, last December on the day after Christmas to be exact, and while I absolutely love the finished skirt, I do not love Butterick’s lack of labeling pattern pieces in their instructions.

After sewing the panels together, struggling to get the zipper to match the seam (despite all the pins, it kept moving), and doing some waist adjustments, I realized when I went to sew on the waistband that the zipper was sewn on the wrong side. Being a circle skirt, one might think this doesn’t matter, but at least in the case of this skirt the curve at the top of the front piece is larger meaning that it has to go in front. I ended up tiredly debating for about twenty minutes if I really wanted to go through the trouble of removing the zipper and finally came to the conclusion that: a) I really didn’t want to rip out the zipper and struggle with it all over again, b) I’ll probably only wear this skirt a few times a year because it’s a Christmas print, c) Despite efforts to avoid it, the waistbands usually get sewn on with the overlap on the wrong side, so here was my chance to sew it on backwards and not have to worry about ripping the whole thing apart to fix it! and d) I may have been wearing my other skirt backwards all year. Also, did I mention this was the evening of the twenty-third?

On Christmas Eve, I attached the waistband and did the hem before going to bed with the idea of sewing on the hooks and eyes in the morning. Christmas morning I started to sew them on, only to discover on one side of the zipper the waistband had been sewn about a ¼ inch higher…sigh…so I ripped out the stitching for about two inches, readjusted and sewed the waistband back on, and finished with the eyes. All this trouble, but the skirt was done for Christmas!!! Yay!!!

 

 

 

Outfit Details

Blouse-me-made

Circle skirt-me-made

Reindeer brooch-thrifted

Gold clutch-thrifted

♥♥♥