The Abby A-Line Skirt

I use to love using contrasting colors and different fabrics to construct clothes for my daughter Abby and being like a kid myself I thought this design element would be a bit fun to bring into adult clothes.

Thus the Abby A-line skirt it is 🙂

I used a fun cotton for the pocket facings too because I’m such a kid:

The pocket backs are black as well as the band on the bottom of the skirt and unfilled piping along the waist band:

I lined this skirt with aqua to pick up the blue on the print of the skirt. Plus its my favorite color. My favorite thing to do is bring out the color I love about the fabric and use this in my serger as well!

Before committing to the side seams I baste first and try it on just in case it needs some tweaking:

I put in an invisible zip and I think I finally have this zipper thing down! I am going to make a tutorial on invisible zips soon.

There will be no raw edges showing, I will be hand sewing the waist band in place, as well as around the zip, and the bottom of the band. I usually hate hand sewing but when I did my pencil skirt with hand finishing touches it was kind of relaxing and enjoying. Wow did I just say that?

I love the lining in these skirts, it hangs better and feels fantastic!

And here is the skirt completed!! Yay, I spent 3 hours in total hand sewing and finishing touches AKA: button 🙂

and again I think a dark neutral top looks best with a busy print:

 

Drafting the A-Line

What sewing projects are you working on?

I have been using my skirt block and drafting a new skirt. This time I choose an A-Line shape. I started off with 2 inch insertions but it turned out a bit to flare for my taste. I redrafted with 1.5 inch insertions and was happy with the drape.

I want this skirt to be more casual but still fun so I decided on a color block design.

I am going to have the pocket area a contrasting color as well as a band on the bottom of the skirt. I had some scraps lying around and did a mock-up in muslin to see if I would like it.

I think it will be very cute in the fabric I bought. Here is a sneak peek (I am completely finished it except for hand sewing)

I am still plugging away on my bodice sloper too! This was an absolute mess, I had so many copies I had tweaked lying around, ahhh why did I not consolidate these changes!!  That took 3 hours or so to recheck and recopy a master draft with careful measurements and ….yes yet another muslin…

 

It takes a long time for the instructor to get back to the student. She has so many classes she teaches and I can just imagine what her email box looks like! Yikes.

So what changes should I make?? I don’t know what else to do. My CB is shorter than my CF which is really weird and not really suppose to happen right? So I would hate to shorten it any more, but I think it needs some sort of tweaking??