I started with the skirt. I've been craving a swishy skirt to wear lately so when I found this blue knit rayon at Walmart I knew what it was going to be. I contemplated making a dress, but decided in the end that if I made a skirt and top each piece would get more wear.
I knew I wanted lot of volume in the skirt so I cut a full circle. The only problem was that, with the width of the fabric, if I cut the waist big enough I lost too much in length and midi skirts really don't work on me (too short) so I cut another two half circles and sewed them all together. Now I had lots of volume and lots of length. I then serged on a very wide (5 or 6 inches) waistband of grey jersey.
As it turns out I kept too much length and made it a bit too voluminous. After washing it once and wearing it once or twice I kept tripping over it - it grew quite a bit! I also didn't really like the grey waistband after all so I ended up cutting the grey off, took in the three seams about 2" tapering to nothing about halfway down the skirt and added a 1.5" waistband of the same blue material. Much better.
I didn't bother finishing the bottom of the skirt, all seams on the inside were done on the serger.
I then wanted to make a top to go with it. As its getting into fall I wanted it long sleeve so I pulled out the pattern I used to make my slit sleeve black top and made it up exactly as I did last time.
I finished the neckline with a facing that was top stitched using a stretchy stitch on my machine, hem and sleeve edges were turned under twice and top stitched as well for a clean finish.
The problem I have is the neckline tends to stretch out a bit with wear - I should have used some stabiliser in the neckline.
I'm not in love with the top, The material was a bit too thin for this pattern, but it's comfortable so it will probably get plenty of wear this fall. The skirt has already had plenty of outings and will get many more so that's a win in my book.
That swishy skirt is glorious!
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