Owl, really?

Corny, I know, but I love owls!

When I visited an art fair one day this fabric jumped out at me and demanded that I buy it. There was 3 metres of it and I knew that I wanted to wear as much of the fabric as I could.

I have a dress pattern that I mostly just use the skirt part of now: it is for a double-layer skirt, with full underskirt and split overskirt.

This is another skirt based on the same pattern, that I have made with a high-low hem: 

However for the underskirt I only had white fabric at home and was trying to work through my stash at the time. 

So I pulled out the fabric dye.

I dye in the washing machine. It works great. And sometimes freaks housemates out. And with this fabric they may have had a point... 

The first lot of things I dyed on the day were done with blue, for another project. 

Two things that were a bit of oops:

• I didn't wipe down the top inside of the machine afterwards (which I do now), so when I put the Apple Green in, there were still spots of blue in the mix
• I didn't pre-wet my fabric before I threw it in the machine with the dye.

Now, I was really happy with my unintentional result, but the fabric colour came out uneven and had spots, patches and runs of odd little colours from where the blue and green mixed:

Once I had washed both of my fabrics, I laid them out with the pattern pieces on the floor and cut away:

Something that saves you hours of tedious machine stitching is an overlocker (I have a Janome). You whiz all of your raw edges and joins through it and your fabric won't fray on you.

This pattern has a zip in the back. I joined both layers of the skirt together before I put the zip in, rather than adding the overskirt afterwards.

Then it was a matter of hemming the bottom and finishing the waist band.

I sometimes regret not putting an additional waist band on this skirt, because it can dig in a bit. The original pattern was designed to attached to the bodice of the dress, of course.

So what I did was fold the top over and stitch it down, so that it was comfortable. I also added a velcro closure at the top of the zip, as the last thing you want is your zip undoing itself. Sometimes velcro digs into your skin less than buttons.

I took the front of the skirt in after a few weeks, as I wanted it to sit up higher. I added a cute flower button to hide the stitching.

The final product is here, as bright as I could have ever hoped for. Green is also my favourite colour! 

All dressed up and only work to go to!

I have since taken this skirt up by about 10cm, as I was finding that I was tripping on the stairs at work and nearly breaking my neck.

The great thing about knowing how to sew (thank you, wonderful mother!) is that these kind of alterations are easy as.

Until next time ;)