She calls this her "Spring Skirt".
No clever title this time, just the facts. These are 2 skirts I made for Gwyneth a while back and hadn't blogged yet. The Insa skirt is from Sewing Clothes Kids Love, although I confess I already had the pattern and just hadn't used it yet. I'd made one for Maeve last year and she loved it and had planned to do one for Gwyn but just hadn't gotten around to it. Obviously, I didn't use the same fabrics, although I did use a polka dot for Gwyn's underskirt just like I did with Maeve's. And both of those fabrics came from Banberry Place - Gwyn's is the aqua poplin with spring-green dots. The top layer is an awesome ebay find - the famous Oilily suitcase fabric! This stuff is so soft. It really feels like your favorite sheets or shirt that have been washed a million times. I used the same polka dot poplin for the waistband because I felt that introducing another fabric with the busyness of the suitcase fabric would have been too much.
Embellishing is always fun, since I can dig into my stash and put all kinds of things to use and this skirt was no exception. I inherited a ton of ric-rac and other trims from my grandmother and my mom's godmother and I like to use them because they tend to be 100% cotton, as opposed to the polyester kind that is so prevalent now. I made use of a vintage yellow medium ric-rac at the hem of the overskirt and stitched a green dotted ribbon on top of that. I say medium but it's actually more of a large size, I guess. On the underskirt we have new (polyester) rose ric-rac in a smaller size with a wonderful floral woven ribbon I had sitting in my stash for a few years, waiting for the right project. It has all the colors in the skirt, with the exception of the red in the overskirt, and the floral shapes kind of echo the floral shapes in the overskirt fabric. To top it off I found 2 flower appliqués - one large aqua and one small yellow, which I sewed near the underskirt hem. Lastly, I made a cute little tag with my favorite Farbenmix ribbon, which has a flower that perfectly matches the red small flowers in the overskirt.
The Redondo skirt was originally made for Valentine's Day. These are just quilting cottons - I forget what the name of the main print is, "Love Letters" or something like that and I don't remember the manufacturer, although it might be a Kaufman print. Don't quote me on it. The flounces are made from everyone's favorite Michael Miller Ta-dot in pink with red dots.
I love how the skirt looks like a big flower when you spread it out this way. I love this pattern and really want to use it more, since this was only the second time I'd done it. It was also the first time I did the flounces, as opposed to the inserted ruffle. I decided to be brave and use Nancy's method for the flounces, using the inner curve of the skirt gore as the shape for the flounce and it turned out really well. There are a few places where it puckered when I was sewing and didn't see it until after I was totally finished but I chalk that up to being in a hurry to finish it for Valentine's Day, which was the whole reason I made it. I actually sewed this in 2 days, though I only actually worked on it an hour or so each night. The hems for the flounces and for the skirt itself were all made with a rolled hem on my serger, using wooly nylon in the loopers to ensure that the raw edges were completely covered. You can do a rolled hem without the wooly nylon but I never think it looks as good, no matter how much I shorten the stitch length. You can see a close-up of the rolled edge here. Gwyn wore this on Valentine's Day with a red shirt that had a sparkly pink heart and the words "Daddy's Girl" on it. Lucky for me she didn't stop wanting to wear it after Valentine's Day and when it got too warm for long sleeves she replaced that shirt with a pink one that says "Love Bug" and has a ladybug on it. I love that her go-to clothes are almost always things I've made.
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