Another mummy out and about outfit

Well Anna's conjunctivitis cleared up pretty quickly and without me catching it either. I managed to get the drops in quite well using your tip Jean, although Anna screamed so loudly and wriggled so much it still took two of us to hold her down! I don't like putting eye drops in my eyes either, so I don't entirely blame her.

I managed to get some time in last week making another playground friendly outfit. I'm sure denim skirts come in and out of fashion (not sure whether it is in or out right now), but for me it's a bit of a wardrobe staple. I had a RTW dark denim knee length skirt which I really liked, but foolishly decided to cut off the waistband and part of the front to replace it with a stretch panel to make it into a maternity skirt. Except I didn't factor in that my hips + butt grew so large that when I went to try on the skirt to see if I had cut the panel low enough to sit under my belly I couldn't even pull it past my knees! I did make this denim skirt shortly after having Anna, but now that I've gotten rid of the baby weight it's about a size too big and it has too complicated side panels and too much topstitching to bother undoing it.

I originally thought about making skirt 109 from Burda 1/08, which has unusual shape panels on the front with top stitching, but since I am a pear shape with saddlebag thighs I feared that the decorative topstitching would just point out those bits I'd rather disguise. Mentally I had the picture of it looking like this:

So I decided to make skirt 128 from Burda 1/09 instead not only because it has a similar pencil skirt style and decorative topstitching but mainly because I've already traced it out when I made it in green wool as part of a skirt suit! Yeah I know, lazy attitude but tracing those patterns out is a draining task.

Given my recent track record of sewing from the stash, I was a little disappointed that I had to buy some denim for this project, but I really was after a dark blue colour which I just didn't have. Luckily I found some stretch denim in the colour I wanted at Spotlight on the clearance table for only $6/m. And here's my finished project:

I topstitched the front vertical seams and the faux waistband tab with the traditional orangey/brown colour topstitching thread, and used two matching brown buttons from the stash on the front tabs. I'd show you a close up of the topstitching detail, but embarrassingly it's turned out rather wonky and in fact I may unpick it and redo it because I know it will bother me no end. But here's a view of the back instead, showing the back vents:

This skirt isn't overly difficult to make, but sewing those curvy tabs at the front was more difficult on this one than the wool version I made, I'm guessing because the fabric is stiffer. I also changed the order I made this one in, I sewed the side seams absolutely last and instead sewed the front facing to the front panel, the back facing to the back panel and then sewed the side seams starting from the facing and in one continuous seam down the sides. This differs to the normal order of sewing the front to the back at the sides, and then sewing the facing the whole way around the waistband. By doing the side seams this way I could take in the side seams without having to undo the facing. I'm glad I did too, because I ended up taking 3cm in from both sides to get a tighter fit for this skirt.

Thank you for the suggestions on what to wear with the red skirt. As you can see Paola, I've taken your advice and worn the denim skirt with some boots - it's a look I love on other people but have never tried it out myself so it's time to change that. I did actually wear the red skirt out last week to the museum, but with flat shoes because my feet were sore from clomping around the city the previous day in heels:

But now I've decided I don't like my denim jacket (it's JCrew picked up from an opshop years ago), so while I've got blue thread in the overlocker I may make another one instead. And speaking of my overlocker, wrapping the thread twice around the hooks above the tension dial seems to be working - thanks Sherry! I also changed the needles to jeans needles since I was working with denim and it seems to be working fine. I won't challenge it right now with knit fabric though.....