Changing Gears

I've been starting to get the feeling that my mom thinks I've abandoned sewing. The refashions I've done? That's just fiddling around and doesn't count. So, to appease her, this weekend I made something from scratch. After all, she bought me my sewing machine, taught me to sew, and is my help line when I get stuck, so I need to keep her happy.

There's a pile of brown fabrics here in the computer/sewing/laundry room that's been blocking my path to the filing cabinet for, oh, the past three or four months. That seemed as good a place as any to start. I went through it and came up with some brown, embroidered linen I bought on clearance last year. With the embroidery and the sequins and all, I just wanted to make a simple skirt, so I went through my patterns and picked Butterick 4461. That's not my usual a-line skirt pattern, but I wanted to give it a try.

The skirt went together really well until it came time to sew in the facing at the waist. The pattern calls for ease stitching, and it does require quite a bit of easing to fit the skirt to the facing. It isn't the way I would have done it, but it came out fine (after a bit of swearing and seamripping and resewing).

The best part of all is that I didn't have to buy a thing! I had the zipper, thread, pattern, fabric, and even the flexi-lace for the hem (15 cents!). And I'm one step closer to the filing cabinet!