My Essential A-Line is now a book! With the pattern included! Details here!!
Yay! I tackled this skirt today and it's the bomb (or the shizzle, or whatever the word is now)! I used the Olive Oil Stripes from Vicki Payne's For Your Home line and I can't wait to make more things with this collection. It's home dec weight and I really wanted to give it a workout to make sure it holds up for wearing so I put it in the washer and the dryer and it came out great. Normally I would just wash and hang to dry but I never know if my kids are going to throw my things in the dryer when I'm not around so I just ran it through the whole process so it's as pre-shrunk as possible. It shrunk about 1 inch for every yard washed which is not bad at all. The colors held up great and it ironed out quite nicely. It lost a tiny bit of the sheen but who wants sheeny clothes? Not me.
I used the Butterick 3597 (pictured below) pattern which is out of print but it looks like the Butterick 4461 is a fairly similar a-line pattern if you go looking for one. I made a few adjustments that I'm happy with. I cut the back out in one piece instead of two pieces with the zipper in the middle. I just folded the whole straight side of the back pattern piece under 5/8 inch and then put that edge on the fold. I installed the zipper on the side which I like much better. Oh, and I flared the skirt out a little more towards the bottom so it doesn't go down as straight as the pattern but has a more extreme a-line look.
And here's my little interuption. I'll bet Christie Brinkley never had to put up with this while modeling. I'm smiling but inside my brain is yelling "For the love of all that is precious...don't touch the skirt!!"
I'm so happy with this and I really love the nice weight of the fabric. Kind of a cross between a twill and a lightweight denim. Oh, and I lined it with a nice cotton so no slip necessary (few things are worse than a polyester slip in the Arizona summer).
Laura Gunn's Lantern Bloom is arriving tomorrow (yippy!). I'll put it in the store tonight. I can't wait to make something out of it (that's next)!
