Another Patrones 272/48 Stretch Pencil Skirt

I have reclaimed my sewing room after having my sister visit from the UK for Chinese New Year.  It was great to spend a decent amount of time with her and although I miss her now she is gone it is nice to be able to sew again.

The next few projects were all finished before she arrived, but I'm still working on the photography for some of them.  We had unseasonably gorgeous weather here in Hong Kong for Chinese New Year and I should have used that opportunity to take photographs, but I was tied up with other things and of course now it is dark and rainy.

This one is a pretty boring make, and is in fact a complete repeat of this skirt here, even down to the store where I bought the fabric.  One yard, HK$20 and about an hour of sewing and I have a new skirt.  Nothing new to add on the construction I just wanted to show that even projects that are so easy they seem like cheating are worth doing.

I know purple is not everyone's cup of tea but I am going through a bit of a purple phase right now, spurred on by my new not-balenciaga bag.  It will pass eventually!

Lastly to those who asked, the pattern for the navy doubleknit dress from my last post was from the monthly Burda Style magazine, the August 2009 issue.  You could try searching ebay and similar sites for it.  Burda make lots of their patterns available online here, but they don't seem to go back as far as this one unfortunately.

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.

Patrones 305/4 - Shorts

Here's something you don't see everyday on this blog - shorts!  In fact I don't think I've even worn shorts for about 10 years, but there is something about vacation dressing that I find quite liberating so I thought I would give it a go.

This is the same fabric that I used for my khaki pencil skirt so it has a bit of stretch to it.  The fabric remnant only cost me around US$ 5 so I was pretty happy with being able to squeeze two garments out of it, and aside from having to invest a bit of time this was the perfect fabric for a bit of experimentation.

To take it one step further I used a Patrones magazine pattern, pattern 4 from issue 305.  I have a couple of years worth of these Spanish pattern magazines and they do seem to like their shorts, this particular style came with a large photograph in the magazine which helped me figure out how to make them.

 I started with a size 42 (the sizing is different to Burda where I am a 38-40) which required very little alteration and I lengthened them by a good few inches.  Not ready for short shorts just yet, baby steps!

I speak practically no Spanish so I just winged it on the construction, but these went together fairly easily.  The only part that gave me trouble was the front waistband detail, I couldn't figure out how to get a neat and bulk free finish with the 3 separate pieces.  Then I realised that since the shorts have a side zipper I could just fake the look of the front.  I redrafted the waistband as a single piece with just a pleat where the buttons are, topstitching the edges of the pleat to mimic the original design.  This worked brilliantly if I say so myself, sometimes having no instructions can be a good thing and make you think for yourself.

These are the last of my Italy modelling photos, I do have a couple more things I made for the collection that didn't get worn so they will be coming soon and I will try and engineer some more interesting Hong Kong photos than the back of my front door.

 

Cats everywhere, I don't know who feeds them but they are all fatter than my own stay at home, do nothing all day moggies.  I realise this is a BurdaStyle kind of photo where you can't see the shorts at all, but well, cats!

This is inside the grounds of the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, one of the residences of the Medici family.

Patrones Issue 272, 48 Versace Skirt

Here is a reminder of the pattern.

Melissa wisely commented...

"ooh I can't wait to see the Versace skirt in real life - I have that issue but the model photo really frightens me, like it'd show every little ounce of belly. That you're so enthusiastic totally intrigues me."

...which is interesting and got me thinking that it is very rare for me to select a pattern based on magazine photos these days, I really just look at the line drawings.

In this case I think the model is just doing one of those model-ly poses and trying to look curvier than she is, or something! At the end of the day this is a pretty simple, slightly high waisted pencil skirt. I like it because;

1) Its based on a Versace design and I am a total sucker for that kind of thing.

2) The section seams are placed further out to the side seams which suits my shape better.

3) The cut is slim, yet there is no need for a back vent - admittedly I haven't tried climbing on a bus in this yet though.

4) For Christmas my husband got me a years subscription to Patrones so I wanted to get a bit of practice in and get comfortable with the sizing.

If you already have a pencil skirt pattern that you like then there is certainly no need to try and track down this old Patrones or the February Burda mag looks like it has 2 decent pencil skirts in it. The second one is very similar to my skirt - the back looks the same and the front has darts instead of seams to shape the front.

Anyway enough waffle, here is the finished skirt, like most pencil skirts, it's versatile, classic and quick to make too. This is going to be part of a mini grey collection (details to follow....) so I will show photos when all the pieces are done.