The seven year shift or Simplicity 9620

I realised during Me-Made-May that I wear seperates a lot! They are more versatile for my day-job and I enjoy mixing things up with different combinations too.

I do like a nice dress though and in April, as the realisation of MMM loomed closer I figured that I did need to mix things up a bit. Enter Simplicity 9620 in black and white plaid.

This was not a conscious choice of pattern but happened to be a UFO that had sat in my stash pile for about seven years! It had moved house in this unfinished state two times - can you believe that!?

Anyway, back to the pattern.
It is a very easy make. A simple cut on fold for both the front and back (you heard it! NO fastenings) with bust darts and back darts with facings for the neckline and armholes.

The main body of the dress had already been sewn together (seven years ago) so the only thing that I needed to finish on the plaid shift was the facings and hem. I had the neck-facings already cut out but only one armhole facing; and with no extra plaid fabric I had to free-style the finish on the armholes with a rolled hem (machined on the first roll, then hand-stitched on the second).

It didn't take me very long to finish this little cutie and made me wonder why it was abandoned in the first place. The only issue I have with my finished garment is the placing of the plaid. I obviously was not as detail focussed when I originally cut this shift out seven years ago; if I had the chance to re-do it I would make sure the prominent white line in the plaid was centralised in the middle of the dress. I would also aim to match the side seams better too.

At least it shows with extra practise and the help of fellow bloggers like Andrea,  Katie,  Tilly, Winnie and Jen I have improved my eye for detail and my knowledge of garment sewing. Yeah!

UFO busting - Simplicity 2154 Pencil skirt

Another UFO (un-finished object) that has lurked alien-like in the wardrobe since July is the Simplicity 2154 pencil skirt. I attended a two-part workshop at Saturday Sewing Sessions in Chelsea which was great fun. There was only one other attendee who was also called Caroline who made her pencil skirt in royal blue fabric.

Back to the skirt.... well the evening sessions happened to be on two of the hottest days of the summer and the workshop was held in a cute little textile studio space with windows that could only open a tiny bit so we literally were in a sweatshop!!

During the cutting out stage I drafted from a smaller size at the waist to the next size up on the hips to fit my measurements more accurately. Despite this I still needed to take quite a big chunk off each side seam (which included re-doing the zip three times!!!). Note to self - always baste stitch in the zip just in case......

At the end of the workshop I 'only needed to.....' hand stitch the waist-band, hand stitch the hem and finish off the side-seam where the zip was located.  Now after the re-sewing of the zip three times I had fallen a little bit out of love with this skirt and was beginning to think I would never finish it but I read Lladybird's blog about 'How do you find the time to sew so much?' which made me re-evaluate some of my spare bits of time. Hence the blitzing of the UFO's X-Files stylee!!

Almost finished pencil skirt

Delightful colours and styling on the Simplicity cover ; )

I applied bias-binding to the exposed seams around the zip area because the zig-zag stitch wasn't sufficiently keeping the fabric from fraying

The finished pencil skirt!