A Dilemma

On Wednesday I had tea and cake with penelope_waits at Hausfrau (<3) and i delivered to her the two Colette patterns i had ordered for her. Eager to undertake this clothes sewing business (Es is an amazing quilter, but hasn’t made clothes from patterns before), we headed to one of her favourite fabric enablers (Patchwork in Malvern) and I was somehow talked into making my own Beignet (in the most adorable fabric ever). In retrospect this was probably not the best idea. Despite the allure of Es and I both sewing our skirts, learning and chatting and drinking tea, we overlooked the problems of sharing a sewing machine, space and a pair of scissors. Basically it meant everything took twice as long and also the sewing machine decided to act up for poor Es everytime she re-threaded her green thread! (it was fine for me, which made me feel terribly guilty!)

Aaaanyway, I managed to get all the machine sewing done on my skirt and am left with a few handsewn things to do (belt loops, belt and buttons) but have a little bit of an issue. As you can see in the link above, this skirt is designed to be a high waisted skirt with the hem above or on the knee.

As usual, despite measuring myself, choosing the appropriate size and pinning and trying on at every turn, this skirt, like SO MANY OF MY HOME SEWN THINGS!, is TOO BIG! *sigh* seriously, this always happens with my sewn things. Often I can just nip a few seams in, but that’s a bit hard when the thing is lined and faced and all those things. (at least there’s no zip!)

There are two ways i can proceed from here.

option a) I can sew the buttons on as directed which would result in a skirt that sits on the top of my hips, with the waist at my belly button like so:

option b) I can cheat the buttons across to the front side seam to create an asymmetrical fastening (probably using press studs on the other side of the front panel to keep everything flat and smooth) which means the skirt sits on my waist, with the top of the waist hitting my bottom ribs like so:

There is a possibility the fabric may say NO (as you can see it’s puckering a bit, but not sure how much of this is because of the pins) and i should/may be able to iron it into submission. I removed the ‘darts’ in the front seam cos i hate them anyway and sewed those seams flat instead, so that shouldn’t really be a problem.

thoughts? opinions? the good news is they’re buttons. If i do it one way and hate it i can try the other way. of course i don’t really want to unpick and resew 12 buttons!

apologies for crappy mirror pics… and yes this room is green. very green.