Gabriola Skirt And Cowl Sweater

  Back in October, I had bought some brown suiting to coordinate with some brown medallion print fabric, with plans to turn it into a dress for my mother. When she changed her mind and decided on a blouse instead, I was left with three yards of fabric, cut as a two-yard and a one-yard piece.

  I've had the Sewaholic Gabriola skirt pattern for a long time... I bought it in a sale in early 2015, but I never made it because I was pregnant at the time, and ever since she was born I've been just outside the size range for the pattern. However, I took a look at the finished garment measurements and thought that the largest size might be wearable anyway, so I decided to see if I could squeak it out of the brown suiting. I had to cut the whole skirt on the cross-grain, but I managed it! It's supposed to be maxi-length, but I'm taller than average and didn't have an inch to spare to lengthen the skirt, so it's not quite that long.

  Unfortunately, the fabric is 100% polyester, which not only smells bad but presses horribly, so the result isn't fantastic. The seams are really bubbly, and the hem is pretty bad too! I'm thinking I'll try pressing everything with vinegar and see if it helps at all.

  The fit isn't great either, which I kind of expected since it's meant to be worn by someone smaller, but it's not tight or uncomfortable and I have a clothing shortage at the moment, so it's going to get worn anyway.

  I had the worst time with this zipper! I don't know if it was the fabric, or the fact that I usually use invisible zippers, or what, but this was the best out of... I think it was four attempts, all of them involving basting or glue-basting as well as pins in a futile effort to keep the thing lined up while I sewed it! At least the seams mostly match up, but I have no plans to put in this type of zipper in this type of fabric ever again! It's pretty obvious from this photo that the back of the skirt is riding up because it's too small too.

  I've got some odd bumps going on around the hips...I'm not sure why. I suspect I may have introduced a slight jog near the seam intersections, or maybe it got a little stretched when I was sewing it.

  The yoke is my favorite feature of this dress, but since I almost always wear my shirts untucked, it's not really visible. At least that means the lumpiness and zipper don't show! ;-) I spent a lot of time lining up the seams:

  I also spent a very large amount of time embroidering a rose on it! I got plenty of practice satin-stitching in, and I think it turned out all right. I didn't have it hooped, but I wish I had because I think it would have prevented me from pulling my thread too tight. Here's a close view. (Please excuse the lint... this was washed once before I managed to get photos and I didn't realize how much lint the embroidery had caught until it was too late!)

  And here's the whole thing... I think this would work better with the scale of the skirt if I'd made it larger, and there are a lot of other little changes I would make next time (like using long-and-short stitch instead of satin stitch) but overall I'm pretty happy with it.

  I had planned to make an Alma blouse from plaid fabric to coordinate with my daughters' dresses, but I ended up with just one evening to sew it so I turned to knit fabric and a very modified Lane Raglan (I would have preferred set-in sleeves but raglan sleeves are faster). I bought this beautiful textured double knit from Imagine Gnats on Black Friday, and since I wanted to wear it with this skirt (which I'd finished in November) I decided to turn it into a cowl-neck sweater. At least, that was the plan. Last minute drafting of the cowl didn't leave time for a muslin, so it ended up as a strange mixture of a cowl and a Bertha collar.

  I used the original neckline of the Lane Raglan, because I didn't want the cowl to be uncomfortably snug, and thought the added height of the cowl would give it enough coverage for me to not feel exposed, but with the collar ending up less like a cowl than I'd planned, it is a little too open for me.

  This fabric didn't have quite as much recovery as I'd expected (it was also thicker than I expected -it's described as medium weight but it's more what I'd think of as heavy weight) so the neckline stretched out just enough to be a problem as I sewed it. I initially sewed it with the seam on the inside of the shirt, but it showed, so I unpicked the serging, and sewed it with the seam allowances between the cowl and the shirt, and sort-of remedied the stretched out bits by adding some clear elastic in the seam.

  I added some width to the pattern to make it a slightly looser fit, but I should have also straightened the side seams some. I lengthened the sleeves too... I prefer slightly over-long sleeves on sweaters.

  This fabric lettuce-edged beautifully!

  My sewing for myself hasn't worked out very well for the past year or so... it seems like everything I sew for myself has multiple shortcomings and fit problems. Or maybe I'm just getting pickier? In spite of all of them though, I really like to wear these two garments... these are some of my favorite colors, and I love the textures, plus embroidery and swishy skirts make me happy.

  I'm hoping I'll be happier with the things I sew for myself in the coming year, but in the meantime I've got several other less-than-perfect things to blog about. ;-)

Thanks for stopping by,