keeping my promise: another summer maxi-skirt

In my last post I promised to be better about blogging my makes, after wearing 3 un-bloggged skirts during Me-Made-May. I'm keeping good on my promise, so here is one of those skirts:

I had picked up the light weight cottony fabric on a trip to Sewfisticated Discount Fabric in Dorchester, Massachusetts. I just LOVE the big bold floral print in this almost retro color palette of teal, olive and goldenrod. At first I was thinking about making Butterick 5886. It's a fabulous dress, and I was this close to cutting the pieces out, but because this print is just so cool I decided instead to make something I would wear more often. And a light breezy maxi skirt with a simple tank or t-shirt has become my summer uniform! (Although, I still plan on making this dress before the end of the summer.)

It's a simple elastic waist skirt with french seaming. At first I made it full, with something like 120 inches gathered at the waist. It looked really bad. So I hacked it below the knee, took the top half in to about 60 inches, then reconnected the full bottom half as a gathered tier or ruffle. Perfect! Well, except... do you know how when you are sewing french seams your brain thinks you are sewing the pieces backwards even when you are doing it right? This time my brain was right. I had stitched the bottom tier on inside out so the seams were on the outside. This fabric is so light, and I didn't have much wiggle room in length, so I was afraid that I would damage too much of it if I took out the seam and sewed it up again. Instead, I pressed the french seams down and added another line of stitching right along the edge of the seam, so it kind of looks like a cover stitch. Pretty clever! You would never have noticed it unless I pointed it out, would you?

Speaking of clever, I will let you know that I re-made and attached the bias strip binding to the Eucalypt Tank and this time it was perfect. I'm so pleased with myself that I'm adding bias binding to my current project as well! But that, my friends, is another post...