stitch magazine skirt

I hope everyone's Christmas was lots of fun! Ours was chaotic, but then every day with the nieces and nephews is pretty much total chaos anyway.

We'll call this a "remix" of the pleated skirt from Stitch Magazine. I left like I hadn't sewn any new clothes for myself in years after all that christmas stuffie and pajama and tote bag sewing (which for someone who LOVES making clothes is some serious deprivation (-; ), so this afternoon I made a new skirt for christmas dinner. This is a $2 skirt... the fabric is a poly homedec fabric, about tablecloth or napkin weight from the JoAnn's remnant bin. It has a 50 cent zipper in it from Daytona, then a ribbon waistband and bias tape hem from my stash. The pattern is loosely the pleated front skirt from Stitch, although I heavily modified it to remove the button front and to work with my skinny fabric remnant. I ended up with a skinny front panel, a skinny back panel, and two skinny side panels. It works ok, although the zipper is offset from the center in the back where the back panel and a side panel meet.

I like this pleated shape from the front and back, but from the side it really emphasizes my swayback. I'm searching for a nice bell shape to make a new skirt for a dinner party- I've got the fabric, which is a soft buttercup yellow wool- and now I just need a good pattern. This is close, but I'll probably look through my BWOFs for a better one.

Kate spent some time investigating my new sewing machine with me this afternoon, and we made a new jumper for her american doll on it. She loves the fancy decorative stitching and so we ended up with a pink jumper with an appliqued heart on the front and a snowflake decorative stitch in purple on the hem. Very "designed by Kate" indeed!