Project Sewn Week Two: Floral Frenzy

This week's Project Sewn challenge is florals. Hm. I haven't worn much for florals in, well, forever, so I went hunting for something with flowers that I also liked and thought I would wear. I bought 5 prints. Maybe a little overboard for a single challenge? Most of them are still sitting in my stash piles, waiting for me to decide what they might become. Two are rayon challis, which is lovely and soft and drapey. And I hate trying to cut it. I made a zippy top out of a pretty purple and neutrals floral, but rayon challis slips and slides during pinning, during cutting, during sewing... In the end it did come out okay, but by going with my bust measurement it was a size or so too big everywhere else. I've worn it, but decided I wasn't happy enough with it for this challenge and I didn't feel like taking it apart to remake the neckline. Plus by the end of the first day I wore it, Ellie had pulled on the neckline and broken my zipper stitching. Guess that didn't get enough care and attention. On with more planning! Which came to a screeching halt when I ended up testing a pattern last week, and suddenly realized that oops! I don't have anything flowered. So I whipped this up so I'd at least have something to show!

There was a flower in my hair courtesy of a small princess, but it didn't show up in the photo. Darn.

When this fabric arrived, the flowers were bigger than I realized. Score one for not checking the swatch with the measurement markings. It's a rayon cotton blend with gold and turquoise batik and gold embroidery.

Up close and personal so you can see the embroidery details.

Since it wasn't going to work for the dress I'd envisioned, and for the life of me I could not find a solid I liked with it in a comparable weight, it sat around while I bought a couple more fabrics. This weekend it came to the rescue as this super simple wrap skirt.

You may have noticed, I'm barefoot again this week.

The skirt is full of cheating as far as finishing details (or lack thereof) because I started it in a hurry trying to get it done before going out on Saturday afternoon. The front edge is actually the selvedge, and the inner wrapped edge is simply serged. Originally I tried making it with two full fabric widths so that I could leave both selvedges, but it was way too much fabric, and that bit was my undoing while hurrying along on Saturday morning. (As a side note, this turned out to be a good thing. It suddenly opened up and poured at the festival we were at, and this would probably be a hinderance while herding small children in the pouring rain.) The hem is serged and folded up once to limit the loss of length in a hem, and the waist is self bound with a pieced strip of fabric that is also the ties. I added quick and dirty belt loops onto the inside back waist to hold the waistband and wrap around piece of the tie together.

Must be time to end the photo shoot and play.

I finished Sunday morning, so I had no husband around to take pictures. These are all courtesy of the self timer. (In related news, I could really use a new and nicer camera! This one does fine for the time being though.) I really like this skirt. So simple, so fast, and so comfy! Grand total even with setbacks, this only took me a couple of hours to put together. It could easily be fancy, but with a simple tee and a ribbon choker it's right at home in the grass with little princesses.