Vogue 1247 Winner

So, all the names were entered into the Cossack hat (it took ages! lol) and the winner of the Vogue 1247 Pattern Giveaway is……………. Tulle and Tweed!

Congratulations Annie.  Please email me a postal address.  I look forward to seeing what you make of this pattern!

Everybody else: it’s this baby blog’s 1st birthday soon and I’m planning a special giveaway so do tune in the next few weeks!

Those thinking of making the V1247 skirt: you have my blessing.  My daughter says it looks like a ”work skirt”, possibly because I used pinstripe.  But the fabric is actually a stripe-print moleskin so though I look like a bossy-boots, I feel quite soft and cuddly!  And unlike wool pinstripe, I don’t see this one wearing out or going shiny with wear.

But was it worth buying a fairly expensive pattern for a skirt that I’ve made before using my Basic Skirt Block,  a bit of guesswork and an old IKEA curtain doubled up at the front?!

Well, yes and no.  There wasn’t much construction difference between them.  Here’s old, inside out:

And here’s new:

The case against:

• I had to do the usual pattern adjustment of changing the outward curve on the sides, i.e. I changed the line from waist to hip to a straight, not curved, diagonal.  Is this a common alternation, I wonder?  Do my readers do this or am I the only one who tries on skirts and finds pouches of excess fabric some 3-5cm below the waist?!  However, I was impressed by how much size 12 of the pattern fitted my shape at the waist and the widest part of the hips, with an ideal amount of ease.  Not that I’m giving Vogue the credit for that: it’s all my own good work in eating the right amount of pies!
• The pattern had to be lengthened to make it more of a skirt and less of a … belt?
• The waistband: the pattern was cut too small to fit the skirt IMO.  I made two waistbands thinking I’d mistraced the pattern the first time.  At the second go, the waistband was still 4cm too narrow to fit a tab with hook and eye.  Luckily it was salvageable (by skin of teeth).  Recommendation: before cutting the waistband, measure twice, nay, thrice!
• The other disadvantage of a waistband is that it’s relentlessly fitted at the waist.  When I pull in my stomach muscles - which, being a former student of Greenwich Pilates, I remember to do every now and then -  the once-perfectly sized skirt becomes too big as the waistband moves away from the body.  This wouldn’t happen if the waist had been finished off with facing: the skirt would just slide down slightly.  See what I mean?

This skirt is so good-looking on the inside that I’d rank it as one of two most pro-looking garments I’ve ever made (the other is Julie’s dress).  Now I’ve had a go at seam binding, I’ll be looking for any other opportunity to incorporate it: a real means of progressing to couture.  But a Recommendation: if, like me, you’re using thick fabric, you’ll probably want to press the side seams open and not bind them together as instructed – that’d be way too bulky at the hips.  In which case, I suggest you make 1.2m more bias binding than specified.

Shame that photos of a black skirt taken in our winter gloomph don’t show it off well, but here are the pics of me getting high on its awesomeness.  Ok, so maybe the sexy fumes of our newly varnished floor helped…