Gorgeous Gore Skirt

Another Style Arc success, this time the Gorgeous Gore Skirt.  I made this the same day as the Ann Tee top, finishing both in one afternoon and evening.  The skirt would have been done more quickly if I hadn't decided to hem the thing by hand, which took a while as its quite flared.

The mad  print rather hides all the design lines, but if you look hard you can see that it has a   wide yoke with an elastic waist and six flared panels.

I was a bit unsure if the fabric would work for the skirt but I think it came out rather well despite not being able to match the print at any of the seams (due to both a huge repeat and having only just enough fabric for the skirt).

Another very easy Style Arc skirt. No alterations beyond a slightly shorter bit of elastic for  the waist and thus a bit more gathering than I think was intended. The length  was correct from the envelope as well.

My only deviation from the pattern was to put the elastic in differently.  The instructions have you make your elastic into a circle, lie it up against the top of the yoke seam  and then stitch a casing for it, whilst keeping the elastic free .  That didn't work for me.  After I'd spent an hour  and cut two lots of elastic out of the casing seam where I'd managed to stitch over it, I stitched my casing first, leaving a gap and fed my elastic into  it flat, then sewed it into a circle by pulling the ends out of the hole,  overlapping them, and sewing over the  join.  This worked well and the gap in the casing stitching is invisible in this print.  As you are putting the elastic up between two layers of yoke, then stitching the completed yoke unit to the skirt, on the overlocker, you don't even get a hole at the back of the waist casing where the elastic went in as its concealed and can only be seen from the stitching on the casing having a gap in it.

Having been rather unsure how many things I would own that would work with this skirt, I was digging around today, planning my week's outfits and wanting to wear this skirt later in the week. I found a lovely purple knit top I'd forgotten I had... note to self: tidy out drawer so things are not lost down the back of it.  In another drawer I had a hand knitted purple sweater with lace edged hem and sleeves, the sleeves are elbow length and it has a scoop neck.    So reckon that should make rather a smart outfit for work, or, in this case, for going into town to try on a pair of purple suede shoe boots which I found on line (along with a number of other shoes in the same store that I also plan to try on).  I want to make sure the shoe boots go with a skirt, so I may as well be wearing a purple skirt for doing that.  :) 

I also found two more purple knit tops, and a slew of black ones...so this should get quite a bit of wear through the autumn (particularly if those divine shoe boots fit me).