Showing posts with label Vogue 1762 basic skirt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vogue 1762 basic skirt. Show all posts

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Mitred hems made easy

Working for a living has its good and bad features.  On the plus side it provides an income with which to purchase fabric, patterns etc.  And it gives The Sewing Lawyer a venue in which her custom-made suits, dresses and other items of clothing can be worn.

The negative of course is that working full time means The Sewing Lawyer has less time for sewing and knitting and ... blogging.  Even though the skirt to match the latest jacket creation was in fact complete before work resumed (3 weeks ago) and this blog post planned well enough that all the in-progress photos were taken, life intervened and you all had to wait.  I'm sorry about that.

The skirt is really profoundly uninteresting as a fashion object.  It's made from the same OOP Vogue pattern as the skirt in this post.  Except I did not shape the waistband so it's even plainer.  However it makes a good foil for the jacket and someday, I promise pictures of the entire ensemble along with the silk blouse to match that is stalled and waiting only for its baby hems.

In the meantime I offer a photo tutorial on mitering corners.  It's my preferred method for a super-neat finish on a skirt with a back slit, but it can be used any time you have to sew a corner where two folded or faced edges, such as the slit facing and the skirt hem, meet.  No pattern fudging required; you do it on the fly.

Start by pressing the facings that are going to be mitered.  At right is the inside of my skirt hem at the CB.  I've made sure the corners are exactly in line.

Next, mark on each fold separately the point where the inside edges of the two facings intersect.  In the photo at left, I've done this with pins.






Unfold the edges, and refold with right sides together so that the pins meet.  As you can see in the photo to the right, the pressed corner is exactly on the fold line.  That is where you want it to be.



The line between the pins and the pressed corner is your stitching line.  Mark it.

Sew along the line.  Do the other side of the slit.  Then turn the corners right side out and press.  I find that I do not need to trim away the parts of the facings that are  inside the mitered corner, unless the fabric is very bulky.  On this skirt, they fit in there very neatly and give weight to that part of the hem.



Thursday, July 18, 2013

Quick white linen skirt

After I made my white cropped pants, I had approximately 2 metres of linen left.  What to do, what to do?  So I made this skirt.

The pattern is Vogue 1762, a "Vogue's Basic Design" ca. 1986.

I made View E, the green one.  But mine is quite a bit (6") shorter. If memory serves, this is the only view I've made from this pattern.  It's reasonably swishy without being overwhelming.  I like the fact that it is somewhat fitted at the hip and then flares.

I briefly considered using the Pavlova skirt from Cake Patterns.  But it's a complete circle, a real fabric hog.  On asking myself the hard questions, I decided I didn't need or want that much swish.  I was aiming at a classic basic that I could wear anytime with anything, not a statement piece that would wear me.  (I really bought the pattern for the wrap top, and I even mentally have some fabric picked out for it.  I'll get around to it some day.)




I also like the shaped waistband on V1762.  My copy of this pattern, which I acquired second-hand, is a bigger size than I would normally buy.  However it fits well and the waistband is nice and loose so I can comfortably tuck blouses in even though it is also quite high.

Flush with the success of my partial flesh-tone underlining on the matching white pants, I did the same again, but this time with a poly-cotton I found lurking in my stash.  It's pretty much invisible, unless someone looks at my lower half far too closely.

Now I have about a half-metre of white linen left, enough to function as trim or contrast on some future project.  I consider the two projects a satisfactory stash-busting exercise.





In other news, I'm still knitting away on my red ribbed top.  It has grown since my last post.  It's past my waist now.  Just a couple more inches to go.  It should look pretty nice with my white bottoms.