Guest blogger Bobbin and baste

When Pitt Trading, a fabric and trim store in Sydney, put the call out for people to submit blog postings for their new website blog I jumped at the chance. I have long been a fan of Pitt Trading and often hunted them out when they appeared at craft and vintage fairs all over town. I also thought it was a good excuse to make a trek to Pitt Trading and see what they currently had on offer.

I spied a beautiful silver threaded wool fabric aptly called ‘Rockstar coating’ (You can buy it here  http://pitttrading.com.au/products/rock-star-coating ) and wanted it straight away. I saw it and thought it would look great in a skirt. To go with my silver skirt, I bought up some black silk to make a simple camisole. The skirt would be the star of the outfit so a simple black camisole would work nicely.

It’s coming into autumn/winter over here (well the weather doesn’t feel it but the shops sure do!) and I’ve noticed quite a few asymmetrical skirts trending. It’s not normally something I would wear, purely on the basis that the skirts are typically pretty short and I’m not one to be showy with my legs. However, I thought I could get away with the style with black tights in the colder months

I used Vogue 8928 as a base for the skirt. You should check out the skirt pattern online and ask yourself ‘who would wear a skirt to work with a split like that!?’ It baffles me. I ended up changing it quite a bit so the only resemblance to the pattern is really that it’s a skirt! I shorted the pattern by about 3 inches and instead of the suggested grosgrain ribbon waistband I used a proper interfacing from another pattern to give the skirt more stability. To give the skirt the asymmetrical front I cut out a muslin of the front pieces and played around with angles. I tried to make sure that there was decent coverage on both front pieces so as I walked I didn’t end up giving away too much! I also wanted the angles to start lower than the hem of the back so the skirt wasn’t getting any shorter at the front. It’s not too difficult to play around with it until you get the finish you want by using a muslin practise version.

The practise version was then used as the pattern piece for cutting out the proper fabric. My only word of advice in using this fabric is to overlock or finish off the seams wherever you can. It’s a loosely woven fabric so it does fray easily. I overlocked seams wherever I could as I went along to avoid further fraying. To help with ensuring a secure & stable invisible zipper down the back I put fusible interfacing along the edge of the back seams on both sides before sewing the zipper in too. I slip stitched the hem of the skirt to finish it off.

For the camisole I used the Colette Sorbetto pattern in a black silk. It’s a free pattern available to download from Colette’s website – so go grab it! I had it on the list to sew up for ages and I am very impressed with the outcome. I cut out a size 6 (Australian size 10) and didn’t have to alter it at all. Thankfully I had some black silk crepe binding that I had bought yonks ago which I used for the arm and neck finishes. The camisole would look great with contrasting binding. I will have to add that to the sewing to do list.

It was a nice change to my usual sewing to make items out of block colour with no patterns or florals. So very unlike me. Now onto the next outfit for Winter!

You can find Bobbin and baste here: http://www.bobbinandbaste.com./

And on facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/bobbinandbaste