S4787 - great skirt pattern

I've been wanting to make this skirt since I bought the pattern last year, but never have. I have a beautiful wool tweed that I purchased from Fashion Sewing Group and am using this pattern for my swap. This really would be quick and easy, but of course, I won't be making it that way.










A few weeks ago, I cut out the body of the skirt. This fabric is really loose in the weave, so I decided to underline all of the pieces with silk organza for stability. I used a loose basting stitch to attach the pieces.




This fabric is GREAT to work with. I wish I would not have waited until SPRING to make this skirt! Wool is so cool because you can practically mold and shape it into anything you want. This fabric is a little bulky, so I didn't know if I would be able to make the narrow hem on the flounce, but it was amazingly easy. The fabric practically just curved itself around the edge of the flounce. This is folded over double.

Here is a picture of the flounce sewn onto the back of the skirt. Every seam on this skirt has been overcast, either by hand or machine. I have my serger in the shop, so I tried out one of the overcast stitches on my sewing machine and decided to use it on the seam allowances. Even though this skirt will be lined with Ambiance, the fabric really ravels, and so does silk organza. Hopefully, the overcasting will help that. Some of the smaller seams are overcast by hand. Right now I am in the process of slipstitching all of the seam allowances to the underlining. I did this when I made my bustier, and it really does make your seams stay flatter.

I certainly am having opportunities to practice the hand stitches we learned at PRWeekend West Coast. So far on this I have used hand basting, hand overcasting, fell stitch, catch stitch (for blind hem) and am planning on using a hand picked zipper in the side.

And, OMG, I am totally in LOVE with this thread. I went into the local quilt shop the other day and needed to get some thread to work with this skirt. I had tried gutterman at JoAnns, but they didn't have anything that was the color I wanted. I knew that "Thimbletowne" sold Mettler, but I didn't know that it was cotton. This shop has people that work their that acutally do sew. The lady I talked with does garment construction as well as quilts and told me that she ALWAYS uses cotton thread on any natural fiber. I've never been a big fan of gutterman, but Coats and Clark is too heavy for a lot of things and doesn't work on my machne anyway. I decided to give this thread a try. I decided how much I absolutely love this thread when I had to rip out a seam. I seam I had stitched twice and already trimmed the seam allowance. This thread just pulled away from the fabric so easily I couldn't believe it. I'm also loving it for all of the hand sewing that I'm doing on this. Yes, I think I'm a convert.