A few more skirts

I've finished up a few skirts ... I'm gonna be lazy and just post pictures of them on hangers.

Skirt #1 is another Hollyburn.  Again, I went with the fullness of the shortest skirt in the pattern, but lengthened to the middle of the three lengths.  I made the waistband narrower, too.  Since I'm not wearing this at my true waist it just works better that way.   The fabric is a JoAnns find: some sort of cotton (a poplin, maybe?)  with soutache sewn on it.  I tried a closeup to show the soutache better, but there's too much contrast between the navy and white.  Naturally the skirt's lined too, with a navy poly-cotton lawn that is not really the same navy as the skirt (much greener in tone) but hey who's lookin'.

I finished this like two months ago, yet have not worn it yet -- it just feels so ... nautical.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.   I guess I just haven't been in a seafaring mood.   But now that Summer seems to be on our doorstep it has a bit more appeal for some reason.



Skirt #2 uses the skirt pieces from a 1950s Butterick dress (Butterick 6075) paired with a self-drafted waistband and in-seam pockets stolen from I forget which pattern.   I used silk dupioni which I machine washed to make a bit less shiny and crispy.

I lined it with a hot pink cotton batiste, and used a quilting cotton with white dots on hot pink to face the waistband.  All my pictures of that came out super blurry so just use your imagination.

I really liked the texture of the silk dupioni after it was washed.  YMMV.  It still feels a bit dressy but it's not quite as fancy-pants as it was before.

So OK, enough skirts already.  On to dresses.  Here's the project I'm currently working on:

It's another 1950s Butterick pattern ... I love these things.  I took my draft of  Butterick 6075 as a starting point and did some seat-of-the-pants re-drafting to get to what is hopefully a wearable starting point.  The making is currently in progress, using a rayon challis that was cheap and that I don't totally love, with the expectation that I will still need to tweak some stuff because the bodice shapes of the two dresses are not the same.

Besides sewing, I have also been working on our backyard a bit.  Among other things, we're adding fruit trees!  I'm kind of excited about them.  We have a satsuma (a small orange-like fruit), sweet kumquat, peach, and key lime (even though we a tad north of their ideal climate).   I'm hoping they survive and that a combination of the brutal Texas summer heat and my gardening ineptitude don't kill them.

My gardening assistant with the satsuma.

Micro-peaches!