Just a quickie, because we’re mostly on repeats now.
Day 19 – The Counterintuitive Black Bird Skirt
I’m still not fed up with this skirt- I love the birdies!
Day 20 – The Black Denim Skirt
Another view of my office
Day 21 – The Minnie Mouse Skirt
It’s a full circle!
Day 22 – You’ve already seen the Pretty Splodges Summer Skirt
Here it is again
MMM – Day 5
Yesterday was lovely. The Gentleman Friend and I went up to the Mount (a big hill in Guildford) for a picnic lunch. Actually we bought fish & chips, but if you’re eating it in the open air, while sitting on a big grassy hill, then it counts as a picnic. Then we went on to Bramley, to visit Birtley House Sculpture Gardens. Birtley House is a nursing home, but once a year they host a sculpture exhibition in their beautiful gardens.
I’m not going to bore you with the photos of All The Sculptures. This is me with “Negentropy 2”, which is as dramatic as it looks.
A work of art – the sculpture not the skirt
I was wearing the Counterintuitive Black Birds Skirt, along with a grey striped t-shirt top, and ballet flats. I think it all worked out well.
Hang it, no, I’m going to bore you with just one photo, of this lovely little feller:
This is Know It Owl by Abby Martin. Isn’t he adorable?
Day 6 – Back to the office
I know you’re all dying to know- did the man come to cut down the ivy? Oh yes he did, I walked in to find the windows all clear of greenery and light streaming through the newly liberated windows.
Before & After
In some ways, I’m a little bit sad to lose the Rapunzel’s Tower feel of our little office. But I now have an unimpeded view of the town and surrounding countryside, and it’s so much lighter.
I’m a bit disappointed with today’s outfit, I have to confess. It’s a stripey circle skirt, another easy-peasy circle with an elastic waistband made pre-blog, out of a substantial stripey jersey, with a bit of spandex which gives it a bit of weight and bounce. It’s a nice skirt to wear. Except that it has got quite a wonky hem. I’ve picked a photo that hides the wonkiness! But the skirt is so swishy that it’s not too noticeable.
Nice skirt, shame about the top
But the top is another story. It’s an old F&F t-shirt type top, and today made me realise it’s time to retire it- it’s a bit shapeless and really not very flattering. However, because it’s a pretty colour, and because it’s a good fabric weight, it’s going into the scraps bag, or maybe the refashioning pile.
I got this finished on Wednesday. I thought it was going to have to be later, as I couldn’t find my hooks & eyes and I thought I’d have to buy another card of them. But fortunately, I looked again in the totally obvious place for them to be, where I’d already looked before, and bingo, that’s where they were. So this is officially an October make, and I’ll have to get something else made for my November one.
So I now present to you, the Counterintuitive Black Bird Skirt:
The Skirt Front
The Skirt Back
What I love about this skirt? The birds, of course! But also the little secret pop of lime green hem binding.
Surprise Lime Green
I did have a slightly senior moment when I panicked that I didn’t have any lime green thread to sew it on, but then slapped my own forehead with a great big “Duh!”, because of course it was black thread I needed, because otherwise the green might show through to the right side of the skirt. I also like that I was making it from stash, albeit stash I haven’t had very long!
What don’t I love so much? My zip is not brilliant- I think I may have mentioned that before? The top of it is a bit off but feh! it’s good enough. Also, I could have planned ahead a bit better, and used the same binding throughout, for design consistency. But I was using what I had available, so I’m not going to feel bad about that either. I’m being very forgiving on myself with this one!
As I said in an earlier post, with this skirt I haven’t done anything new that I’d never tried before. It was intended to be a relatively quick and easy make, which it was. It means I’ve managed to keep to a basic one-garment-per-month schedule, which I’m happy with. It doesn’t sound all that productive, but it’s not a race, and I’ve been making things which have incorporated a fair bit of detailed decoration, that takes time, so I’m satisfied with that level of progress.
The plan is to get going on the tweal dress next. I’m not sure if it’s technically a UFO, since it served its original purpose of being a toile. But given that I always intended it to be a wearable toile, I want to carry on with it. I’ve got a bit more of an idea of what I’m going to be doing with it. Also I think I really need to get this one done before I try and make anything with the leftover teal fabric, just in case I’ve somehow mucked something up.
I’ve got the birds all attached. I had hoped to get it done at the weekend, as I was away at a bellydance festival in Torquay, with lots of time on my hands, but as it turned out I was too busy having a nice time chatting with friends and dancing. But they are all done now. They’re basically sewn on with teeny tiny stitches, that only look neat because they are too small to be seen. If you clicky on the picky you can see them in hideous close-up.
Voici!
The fronty birds
And the backy birds
Normally I’d be teaching on Tuesdays & Wednesdays but it’s half term (Hooray! Who’d have thought I’d still get excited about half term when I was nearly 50?) so I should be able to finish the skirt before the weekend is here- it’s just the hemming. Whether I can find the opportunity to photograph it nicely is another question.
Tonight I should have been planning French lessons for the second half of term. But the birds were a bit more appealing.
I’ve got the back birds done. Here’s the inside view. I think it’s pretty enough that I’d like to use this as a pure embroidery technique on something one of these days!
The inside view of the back birds
That unfinished edge you can just about see on the left is the hem. Never fear- it will be tidied up when I do the hemming.
Having got the skirt cut out last night, I wanted to get going this evening, as it’s a busy week and weekend ahead, and I didn’t want this project to languish.
I decided to use up the last bits of the zebra stripe bias binding for the neatening of the facing. I did a hand-picked zip, which I’m liking a lot, because it’s way easier to keep under control. The seams are lovely and neat. All I need to do now is sewing on the bird decorations, hemming and putting in a hook and eye, because I didn’t get the zip inserted perfectly and I don’t want the zip-pull thing falling down!
The inside of the facing
Then I was ready to think about the decoration. I’d already picked out the image that I wanted to use as the basis for the appliqué, but I needed to make it bigger before printing it out, so I did a bit of work in potatoshop. The actual image was four birds on a twig, but I had to separate them, in order to print them, and actually I decided they might be better as two images.
Birds on twigs
Then I had the joy of cutting those rather delicate shapes out. It was tricky work! I was using up most of the white felt that I had left over from the Jif Lemon dress, so I feel like this skirt will very much be the younger sister of the Jif Lemon, what with the zebra bias and now this felt!
The birds at the front
And the birds at the back
The eagle-eyed reader will notice I’ve reversed the image for the birds at the back. The way they’re positioned, it’s like the two birds on the back of the skirt are kind of looking round the corner, towards the birds on the front of the skirt. They’ll look a bit less wonky once they’re actually sewn on, the pins are distorting the image. I’ve also made the twigs a bit more bendy, because felt is flexible, and I liked the look better.
I’m just keeping my fingers crossed that I can do these birds justice now!
Tonight I started on my next work skirt. This one is using up some of the extra black drill I got for the Jif Lemon Dress (which dress continues to please me enormously). So it’s a bit of a stash-bust. I’ve still got over a metre left, but I have ideas for it, and if that means I end up with yet another black skirt, well, that’s fine for the office, and at least black goes with everything.
The current skirt is being thought of as the Counterintuitive Black Bird Skirt, on account of it being a black skirt that will be decorated with a bird, but not a black bird, nor even a blackbird. It’s a plain straight skirt because I like plain straight skirts, they’re handy. And easy. I did my usual To Do List and it turns out that I’m not doing anything new for this one at all. So no challenges there! The next couple of skirts I’ve got planned will have new and interesting things for me to try out.
Purple Tailor Tacks
Béa's Sewing Adventures 