Quick post

First, I made progress on the skirt I mentioned in this post. It's not finished and won't be finished in time for our trip next weekend, but that's OK. I'll also need to remove about a foot from the length of the skirt. Let's face it, 80s clothing were nothing if not voluminous.

Second, my folks sent me this lovely addition to my kitty collection. I love it.

Getting things done

I started making this skirt just over two years ago. It’s a vintage Vogue pattern by Perry Ellis (this link will take you to an Etsy shop that gives more details). I thought it might be fun to make the skirt and top out of some lovely cotton linen blend I have on hand. The skirt has pockets but no zipper, so you pull it on and then button the waist band, that’s how it closes. It’s pretty clever.

I struggled with the pleats—marked and pinned and pinned and marked but could not get the waistband on the skirt properly. Rather than screw it up, I set it aside.

However, Kent and I are taking a short trip to Key West in a couple of weeks, and I remembered this skirt. I figured it would be nice in the warm weather, so I decided to try, try again. Last weekend I got it out, took the waistband off again, remarked the pleats again, repined everything again, and resewed but no. It still didn’t line up properly.

Saturday, I tried again for the third time. This time, I just pinned pleats and ignored the markings. And finally, it all went together—hurrah! I tried it on . . . not so hurrah. That’s a whole lot of fabric and the skirt was wearing me. I felt like any moment I’d hear the theme song from Little House on the Prairie.

Yesterday, I tried a different approach.

This time I cut a lot of fabric from the center back, and from the center front. Those two panels are what I cut off the skirt. The skirt is still fairly voluminous, but it’s more 1.5 x the needed circumference rather than 3 times. I’ve sewn a gathering stitch and started gathering the fabric. By that time, though, I was tired and cranky, and I’ve learned the hard way that I should stop sewing when I reach that point. Otherwise things go south in a hurry.



Long story not so long, I haven’t finished the skirt but things are moving along.

All the way from Glengerry, Victoria

Which is in Australia.

I fell down the Etsy rabbit hole a couple of weeks ago, sparked by a blog post about patterns and capsule wardrobes best suited for traveling. I have more to say about that in another blog post, but for now I wanted to share the three patterns I got and how amazing it is to me that I could look online at vintage patterns that were the right size and reasonably priced—in Glengerry, Victoria, Australia!—and have them show up in my mail box not two weeks later.

It’s a small world, after all.

Here are the patterns (yes, the last one is most definitely a child of the 80s, don’t say anything mean about it, I love it and can’t wait to make it up):