eye spy with my (pink) eye

Well actually it's not me with the pink eye, it's Anna. She's picked up conjunctivitis from her daycare centre, so I'm home from work looking after her until it's cleared up. She seems happy enough despite having manky stuck together eyes, although getting eye drops in her eyes is a bit challenging! Jodie, I would love to be able to say that her sleep issues have been resolved, but no she is still waking frequently through the night and pretty much sleeps in our bed all night every night because that's the only way to stop the screaming. However, I have resolved to stop fixating on it - I fear I was becoming a dreadfully whingy bore always harping on about how she never sleeps. There are worse things of course, like this incredibly sad tale of a sick little girl and her amazingly strong mother, so that helps me put it all in perspective.

There are many good things about being home in the middle of the day, including being able to snare some daylight time during our currently very cold and overcast winter weather to get a photo of my new skirt on me. And here it is:

I've been looking for some smart casual clothes to wear on my days off work, clothes that would work equally well in the playground as well as swanning around cafes and shopping. After a bit of snoop shopping, I found this skirt over at ModCloth which I used for my inspiration:

I figured this would be a good choice because it's not so tight fitting or restrictive that I can't bend down or crouch down at the playground, but it's also not so full skirted that a breezy day wouldn't cause me grief. With a bit of tweaking to a basic pattern, a now OOP Vogue 9615 - adding extra width for gathers at the front and adding some faux pocket flaps, I managed to get a pretty close knock-off.

I used some red herringbone pattern wool fabric from the stash, and because this fabric was picked up from an opshop I only just had enough fabric to cut out the skirt pieces, so the gathered section in the middle is actually a separate rectangular piece cut against the grain because I didn't have enough fabric width to cut it with the grain. But the change in pattern isn't overly noticeable, and sort of looks like a deliberate design feature:

The vertical seams for the centre panel are visible, but oh well I managed to get what I wanted out of the fabric I had, so I'm happy with it:

For the lining I just made the a-line skirt as per the pattern, which I hope prevents that problem of gathered and full skirts bunching up between your legs when you walk if you're wearing stockings or you're walking into the wind (or I am the only one that happens to?).

Even though this is a pretty bright red colour, it surprisingly matches well with other clothes already in my wardrobe and I'm glad not to have made an orphan skirt for a change. In fact the only problem I have with casual skirts is what shoes to wear with them, because I always wear heels with skirts otherwise I don't feel properly dressed and my legs look stumpy, but of course heels aren't the best option for the playground. Hmmm, sounds like some shoe shopping is going to be required soon!

Thank you for all the tips on the overlocker problems, I will definitely try them out. I have been using the big cones and not the little spools, but they are just Birch threads and not expensive thread because that's the only type of overlocker thread for sale in Spotlight. Same with the needles, I think I was just using some universal type needles, so I will look into whether there are specific Toyota needles I should be using. Sherry your tip of winding the thread around the dial twice sounds bizarre, but I shall try it since you've had success with it. I shall report back soon people!