Saturday, November 22, 2008

matching skirt

This is a home dec remnant I bought at JoAnn's last weekend:


It's a nice navy blue matelasse fabric, embroidered with cream. It was just big enough to cut an A-line skirt from, so I used BWOF 03-2008-122, which has turned into my go-to a-line skirt pattern. It's really basic, just a bias tape hem and a grosgrain ribbon waistband and an invisible side zip.



There's kind of a serious lack of skirts that I like wearing with boots in my closet. This is not even remotely the same thing as "a serious lack of skirts in my closet" because I make skirts all the time. I'm just picky about what I'll wear with boots- it has to be some what thick, a pencil or a-line shape, and usually darkish colored. So this meets all those requirements. Not too bad for a $5 remnant!

When that was done, I decided I really should finally put the buttons on my coat from last year. Even though it's wool, it's kind of light, so it hasn't gotten much wear yet. The temperatures have been in the 20s, so my Navy surplus peacoat, which is the warmest coat I've ever owned, has been getting worn every day.



It closes with snaps, so the buttons got sewn on the outside over the snaps. This coat was made in February...10 months to get buttons. Sewing buttons over snaps is one of my least favorite things to do. If there's some trick (sew the buttons on, then the snaps?) I need to figure it out, because these took forever to put on!

3 comments:

ACorgiHouse said...

Love the skirt Wendy. I always look at the home dec, never seem to find anything. And I'm with you on the buttons. I have a jacket upstairs I made a year or so ago, has everything but buttons, which will go over snaps, and the little bag of buttons is pinned to the jacket! It should take me all of five minutes to finish. It's late now, but I'll try to use your example and finish it tomorrow (but I'm not taking bets, I hate buttons as well.) And buttonholes, well, I may start making a couple times a year trip to NYC just to get buttonholes done, now that I find out you can get it done there! K

wendy said...

I've gotten lucky with the home dec remnants a few times at the JoAnns near me. They seem to often have just-under-1-yard cuts of the nice pieces, and then you just have to wait for a 70% off remnants sale.

Good luck with the buttons!!!

Faye Lewis said...

I really like your new skirt. I'll bet it wears great.