I’ve been eying this lovely black with red polka dotted wool from Mood fabrics for awhile now but couldn’t quite envision what I wanted to make out of it. It’s been sitting in one of my many Mood boards just waiting patiently. I tend to go for bright/sparkly/interesting fabrics and this black wool is more quiet and subdued. But then I was checking through some of my boards hunting for fabrics that have sold out since I added them – as you do if you are as fabric obsessed as I am – and I saw that it was almost sold out. Ack! Into the cart it went, even though I’d no idea what I was going to do with it. And pretty much right after it arrived I knew exactly what I wanted to make.
This is the skirt from Vogue 1203, an OOP Tracy Reese design that came out in 2010. Since my “print” was at such a small scale, I knew I could get away with a design with lots of pieces. However, I had to consider this fabric a stripe when cutting it out and stitching it up since I wanted all my dots to line up. Most of the work was done while laying it out on a single layer of fabric. I was also careful to pin the lines of dots as precisely as possible before running the seam through my machine.
This wool pressed beautifully and was easy to work with. I would have been done with this skirt in record time but I at first thought I wanted to use the reverse side for the center front and center backs. It didn’t look as great as I thought it would so I took all the pieces apart and resewed them with the right sides facing out.
Instead of the exposed metal zipper called for in the pattern I used an invisible black zipper. The envelope calls for a 9″ zipper but I didn’t paying attention to it and used my standard length for a skirt which is 7″. Since this is a high waisted skirt I am sure I will have to wiggle into it. Next time I will use a longer zipper.
One of the things I really love about this pattern is the shaped waistband. You can’t really tell from the line drawing on the envelope, but the waistband flares out at the top, giving some nice breathing room to the wearer. I tried really hard to line up my dots across the top of the skirt and waistband, and had to restitch this area several times.
The full lining was made in black ambiance from my stash. One thing to note is turning up the hem of the lining 1.5″ per the pattern instructions did not work very well with the flare of the bottom. I tried several different methods to make it work and finally had to cut off the excess fabric and do a simple 5/8″ double fold hem.
We have been having lots of overcast days here and photographing black is always tricky. I have had this skirt done for awhile but just couldn’t get a decent picture of it. FINALLY the sun came out in full force today and I got what I needed.