FO: Gray? Green? Skirt

Well, I meant to post this a day or so after my previous post, but it's been a crazy time. Interestingly, this skirt is now too big for me even before I managed to post about it. Interesting. Anyway, when I made my Fairy Tale Voile Sailor Top, I really wanted a new neutral skirt to wear with it. Enter one of my favorite patterns: McCall's 7475.

This is my usual use of this pattern: view B plus the back pockets from view A. Add all the pockets always! I've made this skirt 2 other  times, both of which are still worn weekly, so I knew this was a solid choice to help out my dwindling wardrobe. Interestingly, I don't have a lot of bottom weight neutral fabrics in my ridiculously large stash. I have plenty of cool prints and then things like denim that would stand in a corner on its own, but not much with any type of drape. The fabric I used isn't ideal, but it did the job credibly for a mystery cotton twill. I grabbed this gray? green? fabric at a thrift store for $1.00 simply because it was a usable neutral. It's the weirdest color. In real life it has an olive-green tone, but in these pictures it looks totally gray. But it's not really olive green as you can see by the contrast it shows against my top in the pictures.

Pardon the all over wrinkling, but these pics were taken after the same July 4th trip to The Sewing Studio. I particularly love this pattern because it takes no alterations at all for my sway back - it just curves how it should at my lower back :) And I love the look of the pockets on the front, plus they are big enough to fit my enormous phone. As per usual, I top stitched all the seams with a triple stitch. This proved interesting when choosing a color for the thread, but I just took the fabric to the store with me and chose a strange greenish color, lol. Still don't know what to call it.

Another of the things I love about this pattern is the fly front. There's something so professional feeling about a fly front to me. This one actually went very well, so I'm thinking I am getting better at them. Another reason to love a fly front is when you don't have a weird green/gray colored zipper on hand but really want to sew this skirt up. Since a matching color wasn't an option, I decided to grab a zip from my stash in a color I would be unlikely to use elsewhere - so this has a mustard yellow zipper inside, lol. Yay for fly fronts.

I actually managed to sew the top stitching correctly on my back pockets this time. Usually I mess up the little triangle in the upper corners that helps to reinforce them so you don't immediately pull the pocket away from the skirt when you put your hand in. Usually my triangles are weird shaped and different sizes and overshoot the edge. This time though, they look great :) Yay for progress.

And now for the saga that this skirt became. I finished this entire skirt - hem and all - tried it on, and discovered it was over an inch too big at the waist :/  I was so ticked off. I had gained weight at the time, so I knew it needed to be a bit bigger than the last time I made the pattern, but it seems I overcompensated. I had to unpick the entire two piece waistband with top stitching, the waistband seam, the side seam and top stitching halfway down the skirt, and all the serging on the edges to take this skirt in. Nothing like doing a full scale alteration on an item you just finished, right? Not fun. It took me over an hour, but I got closer to a decent fit and sewed it all back up.

Later that week, I went to my moms and sewed the final step - the buttonhole. That night I cut open the hole with my chisel and sewed the button on, only to discover it was just a tad snug in the hole. So I grabbed my seam ripper to just barely open up the hole a little more... AND I SLIPPED. I've seriously never had this happen, but I guess it must happen to everyone at some point. I slit right through the buttonhole stitching and through my tab to about 1/4" from the edge. I was so ticked off, lol. The only thing I could do was sew a perpendicular line to hold the two sides together, then sew an extremely tight zig zag stitch over the rip and then fray check it within an inch of its life, knowing full well this repair may not hold up very well. I've managed to wear and wash this a few times now and thus far it has held up ok, so hopefully I was being overly pessimistic. Interestingly, I have now lost a weight since I made this and the photos were taken (I don't say this to brag - it has not been in a healthy way, but in a "I'm so stressed out I don't feel hungry" kind of way, which I don't recommend), so the skirt is WAY too big yet again. Like 2 inches can easily be pinched at the waistband :/ So who knows how long I will keep this one in rotation - I don't really fancy picking it all apart again, plus it seems to pull a bit odd across my tummy with each alteration at the waist. 

Anyway, I do still wear this skirt in spite of its issues because it makes a great casual, "go with everything" type piece (and my shirts always cover the buttonhole and the loose waist anyway). Mostly, I'm just glad to have sewn something wearable up in my sewing room back in June :) Here's hoping I can make something again soon!

Summary:
Fabric - 1.4 yards gray?ish cotton twill - $1.00 (thrifted)
Pattern: McCall's 7475
Notions: 7" mustard yellow zipper - $0.10, green button - free, green thread - $1.00
Time: 6 hours
Total Cost: $ 2.10