BurdaStyle 06/2008 - 109 Zip Top / Jacket & Patrones 272/48 Skirt

It seems that taking photos of myself is the bottleneck for this blog, I need to schedule more vacations!

Here are two pieces I made recently, not necessarily to be worn together.

First is this top / jacket from BurdaStyle 06/2008 - 109.  I had a remnant of black doubleknit and a fun patent zipper that needed using up and this pattern seemed to be the perfect match.  This isn't the kind of thing I would normally make or wear, but this was so much fun to put together and looks very RTW sportswear.

This is a very easy pattern to make, although to get Burda's results a coverstitch machine would be nice!  I made a size 38 with just one alteration.  The instructions are to simply turn the neck edge, but I decided to draft a facing which I topstitched down - my fabric is probably heavier than the one they used and I felt I needed something with more structure.  Although my zip was the perfect length in total the teeth come a bit short and the neckline on this top was already pretty low so I wanted to use the whole zipper length.  Alternatively I could have shortened the hem band I suppose.  The opening at the neckline does look a bit unfinished, I might look out for an interesting closure to fill the gap.

Confession time - after I had carefully sewn on the exposed zip, feeling rather pleased with myself at my straight stitching I zipped it up only to see that my pockets were horribly misaligned!  Unpicking the zipper would probably have left holes in it and I didn't fancy unpicking one of the pockets in this fabric either so I cheated and put some tape over the seams, offset to look they they match and added another row of topstitching where needed to make the two sides look the same.  

The neckline on this top is very low and loose fitting, there is no way you can wear it without something underneath it which is a bit annoying, but overall I am glad I used up fabric, zip and got to try something completely new (to me).



I'm still figuring out ways to wear the - what, top, jacket, cardigan?  I think it will work best as an hoodie alternative to throw on over workout clothes although the short sleeves probably rule that out for half the hemisphere at a time!  For the purposes of killing two birds with one stone I'm wearing it here with a simple stretch jacquard pencil skirt.

This was a remnant of some stretch fabric I picked up on a recent jaunt to HK's garment district (the rest of the fabric is a simple sheath dress, in the blogging queue).  The two sides of the fabric are different and I decided to play this up and use alternate sides on the centre and side panels, although the effect is quite subtle and can't be seen in my lousy modelling photos at all.



The fabric is so stretchy that I omitted the zipper and just did an elasticated faced waistband, using the exact method shown here.  You can see my chalk marks on the elastic below that I used to divide it into quarters and match to side and centres of the skirt.

The pattern is a panelled pencil skirt from Patrones issue 272 - #48, but it is such a basic skirt shape there are plenty of similar patterns around.  You really can't see the skirt details at all below, but here is the whole outfit.  I'm predicting this will be a workhorse skirt in my closet and I'm even starting to look forward to cooler weather so I can wear it with boots and a sweater.