Cyan Olive

I thrifted some fabric in 2018 that was an odd combination of vivid cyan and dark olive, woven into a check, and in a weight that indicated it was probably meant for interior decorating.

A few days ago, I made it into a skirt.

My initial idea was to make a sheath skirt, but I was hoping to use up as much of the fabric as possible, and a sheath skirt wouldn't've done that, so I switched to an A-line.  I still don't have a proper plain A-line skirt pattern, so I used McCall's 7981 with the front fused into a single piece and adding a back zipper again.

I did confuse myself and place the seam line (where the pattern intends you to attach the button bands) on the fold--the final fit is fine, in terms of fitting at all, but the front is a touch narrow, which brings the side seams noticeably forward.  This is the opposite of the compensations that should be made for my body shape, but I'm not worrying about it.

I did try to cut the pieces so the stripes would align at the seams, and it's fairly close on the horizontal stripes.  It's just that the vertical stripes are bolder, and I didn't have anywhere near enough fabric to match those.

Cutting the A-line skirt pieces from this piece of fabric also just barely left enough to cut the pocket bags.  Half of them are cut cross grain, and they're all a bit less roomy than the pattern wants, but I was happy to use that much more of the fabric.

I don't think this fabric is pure cotton, and I'm optimistically thinking it's blended with linen or silk.  Or both!  Or it could be ramie (I had so many pairs of ramie pants in high school.)  It was lovely to work with, and took the blind hem stitching pretty well.

I tried the skirt on before letting it hang overnight before hemming, and I actually liked the unhemmed length (I have a history of making this pattern much shorter), so I decided to finish the hem with bias tape.  I had a piece in my homemade bias tape stash that was the right length and a passable color, so I sewed that to the right side, pressed it to the inside, then blind hem stitched the upper fold.

The lining fabric was one of the last craft thrift store visit purchases.

Yes, I sewed this entirely with brown thread, because I (somehow) don't have olive green thread, and my bright blue thread is getting a little low.  The brown seemed like a good compromise, especially since brown is not a thread color I'll generally need very often.  Probably.

I did have a few olive green zippers, so happily used one of those.  I was so happy with the way this skirt was going that I used one of my more interesting single buttons for the waistband closure.

I hadn't realized how mis-aligned the back stripes were until editing the photos.  It's fine.

I am still happy with the no-hand-stitching approach of first sewing the center back seams of the lining and shell, then sewing the back lining piece opening to the edges of the zipper tape, then sewing the zipper/lining combo into the center back seam, then sewing the side seams and continuing construction as normal from there.

I might be able to steam the stripes around the zipper opening a little more into alignment, if it does start to bother me.  It probably won't.