paper clip in hand, I'm forging ahead

ahh, what an amusing bunch of readers/posters I have garnered here on my little blog! I very much laughed out very loudly reading the comments on the last post, from peacockchic's comparison of me to macgyver (and she has a very funny post on her blog about that too), to the always amusing livebird. But the cake must go to anonymous, who referred to children as 'sex trophies' and shutting down her factory - please come back again and leave some more gems!

I did do some sewing last weekend, but didn't actually finish anything because I needed to swing by the sewing shop for some piping and ribbon for embellisment (which took a fair bit of searching to find just the right thing), plus a bit of hand sewing that was needed slowed things down (why is it that finishing the hems on something such a hard task?) But this weekend I did finish off a few things (no new UFOs of late, plenty of existing ones to finish though)

Anyway, Get Smart the movie was released here a few weeks ago, and there has been quite a bit in the newspapers and magazines about Ann Hathaway's style in the film as Agent 99. As much as I love 1950s fashion, I find 1960s style so much easier to wear: sleek shift dresses, trench coats, pencil skirts and shell tops etc. And then I saw a great looking woman in the city wearing a black and white houndstooth check skirt, with a black turtleneck and a slim fitting knee length wool coat in pure white, and she looked just amazing. So with all this in mind, I found some fabric from the stash that I had purchased from an op shop last year (? long enough ago to nearly be free, right Jean C?), and came up with this:

The pattern I used is Vogue 9615, an a-line skirt with a wide yoke waistband which I think is now OOP. Apart from making the waistband out of some stretch cotton knit fabric, no other alterations were needed for it to work as a maternity skirt. It came together really quick, the only stumbling block being that I had to go out and get some piping for the pocket, which by the way is an idea I stole from a gorgeous skirt I saw over on Bloom's Fabric Obsession. And I couldn't help myself but burden you all with a belly shot to show the waistband, you can also see that the stripes didn't quite match up properly at the side, but good enough for me! Also I need to pull the skirt up a bit at the front, or down a bit at the back 'cos it's certainly not very straight is it? Thank god for photos, because husband's never notice these things....

And since it has been rather cold here in Sydney at the moment, I wore a white jacket I made earlier this year from a vintage pattern to complete the mod look. The jacket is a little large on me, which is exactly what I need right now so I have high hopes for this jacket getting quite a workout with a number of different outfits in the coming months.