My second skirt & some dress ideas...

Well, I finally got my second skirt finished just in time for another day of 43 degree heat tomorrow... ouch! They keep mentioning on the news how the weather tomorrow is going to be the worst bushfire weather in history in Victoria, which is scaring me a little (read: a lot) as we have just moved to an area that is prone to bushfires... let's just say that I will be packing a couple of bags and keeping them by the door tomorrow, along with the cat carrier and my car keys!

I made this skirt using the same pattern as the green floral one that I made a couple of weeks ago. This time I made the butterfly side from one continuous piece instead of alternating patterns, just using the floral for the flap. I wanted to do the same thing on the other side, only using the butterflies for the flap and the floral for the big piece, but I didn't have enough of the floral to do that. Instead I used some plain purple poplin I had in my stash for a bit of contrast. I also used the purple for the waistband because it was the only one out of the materials that I had enough of, and I made the ties much longer this time. I screwed up the waistband quite badly this time (didn't have the same problem last time which is a bit weird), but you can't tell when it is on so I didn't bother to re-do it.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this pattern, the way it sits, the pretty bows... the fact that there is a lot of overlap, thus alleviating the fear of flashing yourself in public at the slightest gust of wind! I will be making more of these in the future for sure.

I think the next piece of clothing I want to tackle is a dress. A friend introduced me to the TV show Pushing Daisies sometime last year and ever since I started watching it I have been in love with Chucks fashion sense which is mostly 40s-60s inspired. I really want to make myself some old style dresses, but there is a big step from a wrap around skirt to a dress that actually needs to be fitted properly! Anyone have any suggestions for an easy old style dress pattern?

But next, I need to start sewing together squares for my ragged squares quilt!

My new skirt!

It has been fairly hot in Melbourne this week, so I decided to make myself a new skirt. Most of the ones in my wardrobe are getting a bit old, and I am sick of them! To tell you the truth, I drafted the pattern and cut out the pieces for this skirt during the last heatwave we had, but that is as far as I got. When I found out that the heat was on the way back, I worked quickly to finish this one off and managed to finish it in time for yesterday, which ended up being 40C.

I used this pattern from What Did She Do Today?. The pattern is fairly straightforward, I used the pieced version, but alternated my fabrics instead of using the same one all the way around. I had a tiny bit of trouble with the waistband, but that is probably because I am a newbie! I did find I had to add some more on to them and the ties still could have been longer in my opinion, but I will keep that in mind for next time. I love this skirt so much I already have plans to make another one using the butterfly and floral materials below. Can you believe I bought them on two completely different ocassions? They match so well it was like they were made for each other! I think on this one I am going to use the same fabric all around except for on the flap, like the pattern suggests, but we will see.

I've also made a little bit of progress on the Ragged Squares quilt that I have planned. I have cut out all the squares and 'randomly' assigned which squares are going together, but I haven't figured out where they are going in the overall scheme of things yet. But still, progress is good!