Work in progress: stripey skirt

This skirt was completely not on my my mental sewing list, but I saw the material in one of my local charity shops, left it because I have enough that I haven't used yet, then went back the next day and bought it! And I will openly say that this is inspired/ is a copy of the striped Ginger made by Melissa from Pincushion Treats.

I have been seeing lots of pretty Gingers popping up around the blog world, but am not super keen on the high waist on me.  Many of my skirts that I have been wearing for a number of years, sit a bit lower, and whilst I don't like them sitting on my hips any more, I think somewhere in-between is more me.

I have a pattern that I really like, Simplicity 5564, which now seems to be out of print.

I last used this about 10 years ago, to make the skirt shown in my MMM12 week 1 round up. I call that skirt my Pebble skirt - I have a feeling that was the name of the design for the fabric, and I used view A.  On my new skirt, I wanted to try the chevron effect that Melissa has in her skirt, so I had a good look at the pattern.  It is basically 2 pattern pieces - skirt portion, same used for front and back and a yoked/curved  waistband.  I decided that I would also like pockets. So, time to think.

I got out my trusty tracing paper and traced off the skirt piece twice.  It was a cut on fold piece, so I just added a 1.5cm seam allowance.  I then laid out the material, folded it to find the bias, had a bit of a play, then googled stripes on bias and got useful info from Coletterie and particularly helpful series of posts from Sunni at A Fashionable Stitch.  I marked on the pattern pieces the stripes that I was trying to match, which really helped lining up the matching pieces. I will be basting everything together to check for fit, and will have a play regarding the pockets, which I will be 'making up as I go along'.

checking the stripes

Also on my sewing table are, still, my Burda trousers.  I finally ordered an invisible zipper foot for my machine and put it to use last week. I have installed all the zips in my trousers, but am not entirely sure why the waist zip is invisible, when the opening is hidden by a flap - any way.... These are almost a pair of trousers now, and I hope to have them finished possibley by the end of the week.  

Middlest Daughter has expressed more interest in sewing, and after her success with her bag last year, has chosen a skirt pattern and some material from my stash. I just need to get a zip to match the fabric and she is ready to go.