Two piece Maxi

                     


I've had this piece of material sitting in my stash for quite a while now. I had earmarked it for a summer shorts jumpsuit and I thought it was about time I made it up.

I decided that I wanted to use the pattern that I created for this black slit long sleeve top since it fits so beautifully so I went ahead and cut that out of my fabric - leaving off the sleeves to get a kimono T look.  I got it all sewed together and then went to try it on my dress form.

(Just as an aside I have to say I finally got a dress form for Christmas and I love it - it's a Drizt My Double Dress form and I've been able to pad it out so it's a very good replica of me).

And here's where we ran into trouble.  I could only just get it on over the top of the dress form.  Since the pattern on this fabric had to go in a certain direction I never even thought about whether the stretch was in that direction too - turns out it isn't.   Now don't get me wrong, the top fits nicely - beautifully in fact - its just a bit of a wiggle to get into it and there is no way that I'll be able to make it into a jumpsuit.  So there goes that idea out the window.

I toyed around with the idea of just making the top and leaving it at that.  I finished off the neckline with a facing and top stitched it down about 1" from the edge.  The sleeves I just turned under and top stitched using a stretchy fancy stitch from my machine.

 

And then I started playing around with ideas for the bottom half.  Do I want to make it into a dress? - should it have a gathered waist? or darts?.  Do I want the skirt long or short?.  In the end I decided to make a separate long skirt that I could wear with the top to make a maxi dress look, but I could also wear the top by itself if the pattern gets a bit too much.

To make the skirt I cut two rectangles as wide as I could from my remaining fabric, then measured the top so that it just fits over the hips with a small amount of ease and tapered the side seams of the skirt from that dimension out to the full width at the bottom.    To finish the top of the skirt I used a zig zag stitch to sew a piece of 3/4" elastic around the top edge, then turned it over and stitched again.  As the length was only just long enough, to finish the bottom I just turned it under once and stitched with a stretchy stitch - I finished the shirt off in the same way and we have a compete outfit.