December MAGAM Challenge finished

My December MAGAM Challenge is Simplicity 1465.  I sewed a combination of View E and F and added a lining. Since my main fabric is wool and for some reason wool and my skin just don't get on together, a lining was a must.  How a sheep can look so cute and cuddly with all that fur but when that fur is sheered and woven into fabric it can actually turn out to be itchy and scratchy, I will just never understand.  

View E has the peplum only on the front and the cascade down the mock wrap piece.  View F has the top peplum all the way around - with no cascade down the front.  I wanted a combination of the two - which lead to a few sewing challenges and learning experiences along the way.  Overall, I am very happy with how the front and sides turned out!

Still looking good at the side. 

But I am not happy with the back at all - and this was completely my fault.  The pattern calls for an invisible zipper - which I didn't have on hand and completely forgot to pick-up on my way home.  So, of course not wanting to make the 1.5 hour round trip to the local fabric store to pick up a zipper, I decided to sew in a regular zipper by hand instead.  The bottom portion of the zipper is ok, but the top portion with the peplum is what I am not happy about.  The pattern calls for the peplum portion to be finished separately and not be sewn into the zipper - which of course I figured out after I had already put in the zipper and then decided to look at the instructions.  Oh well - I think the front drape more than makes up for the disaster of a zipper in the back.  

This post is a little backwards, because I am showing you the finished product first and now moving onto the sewing process I used.


First - the initial fit test. In my practice muslin, I added 3/8 inches to each side to compensate for the thickness of my wool felted fabric (it's very thick!).

However, as you can see here - the side seams don't come anywhere close to the side seam area on my dress form and look at all of that extra fabric sticking out in the back!  That's without the zipper being put in.

I ended up taking in the sides the 3/8 inches I added and taking in a little more in the waist too and after that, the fit was much better.  Of course my struggle the entire time with this skirt was it's thickness.  Throughout the entire sewing process, I was trimming, trimming, trimming to try to reduce the bulk.  In the front waist area, there are 2 layers of the peplum, 2 layers of the wool, 1 layer of lining (which lines the front mock flap) and 1 facing on the inside of the skirt - for a total of 6 different pieces of fabric - which is alot for a waistline!

I wanted to add a few extra "fun" touches to this skirt too.  Here are some of the hidden features I added:

Along the facing on the inside, I added the "moo" themed bias tape I had in my stash.  I thought it would work well with the swirly felted fabric.

On the front mock flap - between the facing and the lining - I added this zebra trim.  The mock flap doesn't call for a lining piece, but I opted to add one.  I thought the wool would lay much nicer with a slippery lining rather than catching on the wool underneath it and riding up.

For the hem, I knew again I wanted to reduce as much bulk as possible so I grabbed this ripped silk shirt from my scrap bin and decided to cut it up into strips to make a facing for the hem.

Here you can see the strips sewn together and then sewn onto the hem of the skirt.

I pressed up the silk facing and sewed a catchstitch along the upper edge to hold it in place.

For the back slit opening, I decided to use more of the "moo" bias tape to finish it off.

I added skirt hangers to the top using some more trim in the stash.  I also decided to sew along the top edge (with the peplum out of the way) about 1 inch down from the top to try to hold all of the layers together.  You can see from the different size stitches that my machine wasn't too happy sewing thru all of these layers and it did skip stitches in a few places.

Here's the zebra trim between the facing and the lining on the mock flap piece.   If a wind happens to blow my flap open, the fun zebra trim will flash any onlookers a fun little surprise!

All of the materials used in this skirt were again - from the stash.  Another 3.75 yards added to the total which brings me to 46.75 yards since July.  That's pretty good!  Now why doesn't it seem like my stash is going down?!!?!?

Until next time -

Happy Sewing everyone!