Ringing up the curtain for 2012!

Well I finally have a finished project for 2012 – and it’s pretty much on schedule for my personal goal to make 12 items this year (see 12 in 2012).

I showed a few sneak-peaks of this make on my Instagram/Twitter account, and more recently on my blog:

 

Although this wasn’t one of the garments I specified on my 12 in 2012 list, I left myself 5 ‘wildcards’ to allow a bit of flexibility throughout the year. This skirt is view A of McCall’s M5591 (the main skirt shown on the front of the pattern in the photo on the left above) and the fabric is actually a piece of curtain remnant that I picked up from my local fabric/curtain making shop (The Spinning Wheel) for about £1.50 (hence the title of this blog post). Being curtain fabric it’s quite heavy duty so I thought pleats would work quite well, and they do.

I made up a very quick muslin of this skirt because for some reason I bought the pattern in sizes 6 – 12, and the measurements for the waist and hips for size 12 was a couple of inches smaller than my own measurements! Luckily, the pattern ran very big (as they often seem to do) and there was a lot of ease…and size 12 made up was a perfect fit for my waist!

View A has really roomy slash pockets (for info views B and C have in-seam pockets) including a very smart pocket binding (erm, not sure what it’s officially called!) which I think could look really good made up in a contrasting fabric (I didn’t do this – but just making a note in case I decide to make this again!). As i said, I was working with a remnant piece so I didn’t really have very much to play with and thought some pieces might have to be made out of another fabric, but with very careful placing, I was able to get every piece out of the same fabric! I even managed to get the pattern running along the same line at the front and the back. They don’t match perfectly at the seams (which, as you know, is something I like to try and do – see this post), but considering what I had to work with I’m actually pretty amazed with how well the pattern does match up!

So, to summarise:

Fabric: Curtain Remnant £1.50

Notions: Regular Zip 60p

Techniques:

• Pleating…Knife pleats and Inverted Box pleats
• Hand-picked Zip (on my 12 in 2012 list!)  - WOW…so easy and looks great – I’m definitely a convert!!
• Bound edge of slash pocket
• Serged seams, and a serged hem turned up once and sewn down – so easy!! I decided to do it that way to keep the thickness of the hem to a minimum (enjoying the perks of the overlocker already!).

Pros: The instructions are very easy to follow and it’s quite a simple skirt to make with no adjustments necessary (whoop!)

Cons: The pleats take a lot of pinning to make sure they are sitting just right. Plus this fabric creases like there is no tomorrow so there is a lot of ironing to do before it looks decent enough to wear!

Make Again: Hmm…ironing pleats is not my favourite thing to do so I won’t be making it again in the near future (plus there are so many other projects on my waiting list!!).

***Top Tip: be careful when pinning through thick fabric – pricking yourself and bleeding onto your garment fabric. Not a good idea!!!***