May 03, 2012

It's a skirt! Struggling with Colette's Ginger

I received my Ginger pattern from Colette patterns (which I ordered from fagert.se) on Monday (was away for the weekend and really got it in Friday, but didn't have it in my hand until Monday!). I was so up for sewing view 3 with a striped fabric.

Decided to make a muslin to find the right size and fitting flaws, and lucky I did! Because my muslin turned out quite awful. The waistband was too bigand it looked like I had a pouch on my belly because of a curve in the pattern. I didn't even take a photo, it doesn't deserve to be photographed, it looked so bad on me. I've been thinking about what went wrong and here's my conclusion: (1) the fabric was too light (ordinary cotton) and (2) it was cut on the bias which makes the fabric a bit stretchy and it doesn't give my (slightly round) belly enough support, (3) this was increased by the curve on the pattern in the front.

So what did I change for version 2?
1. I chose another fabric, not the striped one I had set for. I had a piece of denim in my stash, with a little stretch in it, which I thought could do the trick.
2. I made view 2 instead of 3, so the fabric wasn't cut on the bias.
3. I straightened the belly curve on the pattern, maybe 1 cm in the widest part.


Did it work? It certainly did! I'm very happy about the result, even though I couldn't be bothered with using an invisible zipper, but an ordinary one. I used turquoise thread, zipper and lining for the waistband. It looks very pretty on the inside, but it does not show much on the outside.


I even used mock flat fell seams in the front and sides, I got the instructions from the fantastic Coletterie page. On my awful muslin I even did flat felled seams without a specialty foot, instructions here, and those were SO pretty even though the skirt wasn't.



Well, here are pics of me wearing my new skirt (maybe I can wear it for work tomorrow! Yay! But maybe not with that shirt...).



Ok, now I'm beat. TV here I come!

Bye for now,

Johanna

2 comments:

  1. Very pretty. I had problems with the waistband on my Ginger as well. I blogged about it here http://janessewandtell.wordpress.com/2012/03/03/ginger-skirt/

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