Eking out another skirt

 There was enough fabric left from making the cat patch jacket to make a matching miniskirt, using good ol' New Look 6843.

The process of making this was as straightforward as always, even though I once again added lining--in fact, that worked out better than usual.

All my other construction deviations are well-established by now, including the way I press the waistband in half, then one edge up, before attaching it to the skirt; attach it to the inside; stitch up the ends; flip it around to the outside; and finish by edge stitching the pressed edge from the outside.

Yes, I know, a Proper Skirt would not have that visible line of stitching.  I'm in this for finished, not fantastic.

Seam allowances got serged with the navy thread still in the machine.

Since this fabric has very high wool content (possibly 100%? Nothing melted under full iron heat), everything pressed beautifully, and the blind hem stitching disappeared into the fabric.

I still haven't dealt with the sticky camstack in my machine, so I once again used the weirdness of the Necchi 539's on-the-fly zigzag width control to sew a few straight stitches, then engage the zigzag long enough to hit the folded fabric (held in place, mostly, by a little stamped metal arm that slips under the thumbscrew next to the zigzag foot attachment prong--yes, I do use a zigzag foot sometimes), then let it go back to straight for another few stitches.

The lining--hello again, cat polyester--was pressed up 1" twice and straight stitched.

I have another wool skirt I made with the buttonhole a bit small for the button used, so I made sure to make this buttonhole much longer than the chosen button.  But.  I applied Fray Check before cutting the buttonhole open, and, even with the extra length, it's weirdly stiff and resistant to accepting the button.  So.  Fray Check on heavy fabric in a narrow waistband...maybe not a great decision.

Which segues over to what I would call a great decision--finally figuring out how to attach the lining by machine to the zipper in a way that cooperates with my brain.

I don't use invisible zippers, so I don't have the amount of zipper tape available that the top tutorials want you to sew the lining to, and I also don't want the lining free enough to possibly wander into the zipper teeth.  What I finally figured out was to sew the lining to the zipper first, making sure to keep the lining and stitching pretty far from the zipper teeth.  Then, I can sew the zipper to the skirt shell in the normal way--since the lining is so far from the teeth, it might as well not be there, in terms of sewing.  It might? work with a lapped application? maybe?  (not that my brain has wrapped itself around a lapped application yet.)  This method also stitches down the edge of the lining, keeping it from ever having a chance of wandering into the teeth. (I made so many purses with linings that kept getting stuck into the zipper teeth that I now work hard to avoid that.)

And the whole back, in it's full 16" length

But I am a short person with short legs, so short skirts are fine.