Skirt Week!

Crafterhours (seriously, how clever is that blog title?) is hosting "skirt week" 2011 and I decided to enter a few skirts into the competition. The deadline is....ummmm....today, so I figured I'd better get down to business and finish up my skirts!

First - a couple for Madeline. She still has to be bribed to wear pants, so skirts and dresses and anything girly is right up her alley. Plus, skirts are so easy for summertime! I'll start with my favorite:

I fused a large piece of seafoam Kona cotton to some fusible web (I use wonder under) and used a sippy cup lid as a template to cut out about 25 circles. I fused them to the white skirt piece and then topstitched them all in matching thread. I decided it needed something else, so I made an underskirt in aqua - about 2 inches longer than my white circle piece. Then I attached the waistband and made a casing for the elastic.

I love it so much! The 3-D circles give this skirt a little pizazz and seafoam is one of my favorite colors.

Next, a skirt in the same style, but just a little simpler. No underskirt and no applique.

The prints are one of my favorite Heather Bailey fabric combinations. (Ewww, I just noticed I really need to clean my baseboards. And is that crayon on the wall?)

And now two skirts for me! I'm going to be totally honest and tell you that getting dressed post-Will has been a challenge. Mostly because NOTHING FITS ME!! I'm telling you, it's ridiculous. Anyway. I think my point is that I needed some new clothes anyway. Or maybe I just needed to get that off my chest. Either way, here's skirt numero uno:

Elastic is NOT my friend. I need as little bunching fabric around my nicely padded waistline as possible. So I made a waistband and shirred the back of the waistband to make it a pull-on skirt. The fabric is a light-weight black denim. I'm going to get a lot of use out of this one.
Here's the back.

I actually made the following skirt for Easter. It was my first time drafting a pattern for myself. Much easier than I thought it would be. I used this tutorial as a guide for creating a 6 panel skirt. There is no elastic (thread or otherwise) on this one. It closes with a zipper. I added a blind hem to make it more fancy. ;)

I've already wore this skirt to church three times. It's an AWESOME pattern, because you don't have to mess with pesky darts and it's made to fit YOU, so...it's a perfect fit! A little time consuming, but most worthwhile things are. The fabric is Benartex "ZuZu's Petals".

What is your favorite skirt pattern? I had intended to make one more for me - I'd like to try a tiered peasant skirt with a zipper (staying away from elastic, remember?), but I ran out of time. Maybe by the end of summer. Check out all the other great skirts entered in "Skirt Week" here on Crafterhours - there is a link to the flickr groups for each category in the sidebar.

Molly

Kaleidoscope Quilt Along!

I've been wanting to join a quilt along for awhile now and Don't Call Me Betsy just gave me the perfect reason: The Kaleidoscope Quilt! I've been eyeing this quilt for such a long time and this was a great excuse to bite the bullet and put the pedal to the...err...carpet?

This quilt will be a challenge for me, because I plan to make it entirely out of my current fabric stash, which is dwindling by the day. I'm going to have to buy solids and backing, but other than that, I'll be raiding my craft closet.

I have until June 23rd to pick fabrics, so in the meantime I plan to finish up this little crib quilt:



Yup, more pinwheels in a house. These blocks just make me happy, I can't wait to finish this top!

Molly