Pleated Work Skirt

I really needed a new work skirt but as usual was struggling to find anything I liked or fitted me properly.  So I bought some black fabric from the remnant bin for £3, and some cute anchor buttons 39p each so £2.34 for the 6 I bought.  I found a really useful tutorial for a pleated skirt with a great formula to help you work out  how much fabric you need for a pleated skirt.  Unfortunately I could not find my tape measure.  So I ignored the formula and just eyeballed some pleats in my rectangle of black fabric. 

It worked out fine.  After I pleated I tacked along the pleats, then folded some black fabric to make the waist band and sewed that on the top of the skirt (which at this point still looked like a rectangle).  I hemmed the edges of the fabric and sewed the buttons along the center edge, and button holes along the other.  I HATE button holes, and they look entirely crummy.  I hemmed the bottom of the skirt, and I was done.

High Waisted Denim Shorts Finished!

As you may have seen in my previous post a while back I attempted some high waisted denim shorts, which were short-like but too imperfect even for me.  So several months later, I decided to see what I could make of them, and I'm quite pleased with the result.

I added pleats in the waist to take it in, and a longer zip to make it easier to get on, I made a waist band from some left over V and A fabric my sister gave me, and then I hemmed the bottom. :)

High Waisted Denim Shorts Attempt

I came across some nice blue denim and spontaneously decided I has always wanted some denim shorts- really the denim was too small to make much else.  I used another pair of shorts as a guide to draw around and cut out the denim accordingly.  You only need two different pieces for simple shorts (a front leg and a back leg, two of each so you cut out four pieces in total).  I sewed my pieces together and this was the result:

 

 As you can see they do look short-like, which is a good start.  But you can also see that they are too wide around the waist, which is why the zip is not sitting flat against my back.  But they are not purely 'too big' as you can not see how much I had to shimmey and squeeze into them just to get them on.  I think a longer zip will solve that problem, and the waist should be fixed with some pleats to take it in at the waist without losing the size around my hips and thighs.  The fact that the back and front of the legs are two different lengths may just have to remain an amusing quirk in these jeans!  Anyway watch this space, and hopefully Ill get back to you with awesome denim shorts :)

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