Shirt dress with shirring.

Finally some news here on the blog. 

This dress has been underway for a long time. I ran out of fabric (Little Lizzette Collection) and my local JoAnn Store had in the mean time sold out. When I found it at their online store on sale for 50% off almost felt lucky I ran out.....until I realized their shipping was endless. Maybe I was just unlucky (I have never bought anything with them online before) but when they shipped the fabric it took two full weeks before I received it...what? I got it the day before we left for California for two weeks and it has taken me another week here at home to finish it. Hmmm yeah it was just like the sun and the pool were more interesting.

I am sure you recognize the top part from THIS shirt. It is very typical me to draft a pattern for a top, sew it and when I look at the result decide that I have to develop the top pattern into a dress pattern....or the other way around.                                                                                              

I did have a fitting on Wilma to determine the length of the skirt part but when it was done it was still too long....well, at least if I wanted to follow my initial vision of having the belt cover the waist seam. But there was no way I was going to change that when the dress was done and when I look at these photos I actually like the low 'waist' seam and the belt higher up - one of those lucky things I guess! 

Vacation

W's sweatshirt dress is from Soft Gallery and my talented good friend Rikke has made E's owl dress (now top).

We are going on a kind of a vacation. We live on the East coast, Husband/Daddy works at a project on the West coast at the moment and we are going to pay him a visit for two weeks so he does not have to fly back and forward.

We are very excited! And the blog will be very quiet for a couple of weeks.

By the way here is another version of the color block leggings. And again I was tricked by knit fabric. This time in the not-so-strectchy-knit-fabric way and these are very tight and almost too low waist for them - argh! I told you knit fabrics can be tricky to sew with.

Whatever....California here we come!

A-line skirt with snaps and pockets.

I have mentioned a couple of times now in earlier posts that I used to have a fashion business in Denmark years back.  I drafted all the patterns myself - in the very beginning did I even sew the production myself later just all the salesmen samples....urgh THAT was hard work!
I have of course saved all those patterns and this skirt has long been on my list to sew for myself. It was from one of the collections where I got my act together and had a factory to sew my production. But that also meant that if a style did not sell enough then it became to expensive to produce and therefor got cancelled and that happened to this one. I think it got overruled by a very popular skirt dress with the same features that was also in that collection. See photo further down. I am still wearing that shirt dress by the way even though it is now like 6 years old.
I used a lot of cotton sateen with a bit of stretch in my collections back then. I still love that type of fabric. I love that it is cotton but the slightly shiny surface of the fabric adds an interesting dimension. Like with so many others things it took me a while to realize what the English word for that type of fabric was - I am not even sure I know what the Danish word is but that was not a problem since I bought my fabric after seeing it and touching it at a store, fabric fair etc. But here in the US I have only shopped as a private person and mostly online so I have not sewed with cotton sateen for a while....until like I said I finally realized the name: COTTON SATEEN yay!
I even found almost the same beautiful navy blue one that I used in my collection back then. Of course when I bought it I just bought my usual 1 yard (back then not yet decided what to do) and it turned out that that model in my size used a little bit more. Soooooo I ended up doing what I do in so many of my sewing projects.....mixing fabrics. And I must say I love the result. I know that the original one is much more versatile and goes with everything but this one definitely has a bit more character, right!
The lime fabric is corduroy and the check fabric is a thin wool cut on the bias - simply because I liked that look better. (all three fabrics bought on http://www.fabric.com/ by the way.)

Pockets!

The awake reader (anyone?) may wonder why there are no photos of me from the behind wearing the skirt. Well ahem let's just say that my sweet neighbor (who I forced to take these photos) and I were more busy talking than checking details like big grandma underpants showing through. 

But as you can see on this photo it is very simple on the back.

A detail shot of the top of the skirt. Because the check fabric is wool I put the corduroy fabric inside the waistband to avoid any itching. Plus I am planning on wearing this in the summer too (I skipped the lining I had in the original one for that reason too) and you don't need a wool waistband directly on your skin in North Carolina's heat....like at all!

A detail shot of the hem made with homemade bias tape of the lime corduroy fabric. 

Photo: Kasper Thye. Model: Kristina

Here you see the original skirt from my AW2006 collection.

Photo: Kasper Thye. Model: Kristina

And here is the dress in the same fabric with the same pockets, snaps and lines that won the buyers' hearts compared to the skirt. Can't blame them.