Pencil Skirt Plans

It's been a really busy time of year for our family with lots of change. I'm not getting to spend as much time on my creative pursuits as I usually do which is frustrating me a bit, but I know this is just a phase and I'll get back into it soon.

So what's been happening? In December I returned to the paid workforce a couple of days a week. I'm working as a medical receptionist at a local radiology clinic. It's great and I'm enjoying it, and it fits in well with the girls and their routine. My husband has been deployed for a short period for work so that adds some extra pressure as many of you service / fifo / military families will understand. And finally, Anna starts her very first day of school tomorrow (don't worry I'll share pics!) I'm excited for her but also I feel a bit emotional about it.

Despite my best intentions, all these busy things have meant that the sewing machine is gathering dust (well not really because I have a fancy cover haha!) but I have some plans for my next few projects.

Now that I have returned to work, my office wardrobe is a little drab and old as none of it has been used in five years. During the Craftsy Black Friday sale last year, I picked up the Sew Ready: Garment Basics with Brett Bara* class, which is a beginners garment class focussing on all the steps to make a pencil skirt. I bought the fabrics above in the January sales at Spotlight for this particular project.

I love pencil skirts, they suit my body shape much more than a-line. I've watched the first couple of classes so far and Brett Bara is a great instructor.

The class uses the Butterick B5466 pattern, which they provide and mail to you (they send it from the US so mine took 6 weeks to arrive!) and the class covers a lot of information about working with commercial patterns, which is a really big help for me. I tend to shy away from using commercial patterns, but I'd like to learn as I have a nice little stash of vintage patterns that I've collected from thrift stores.

For the first skirt, I'm hoping to inject some colour into my wardrobe by using the Lisette fabric above - it's kind of an ikat print, and I love the bold orange and pink.

I also bought some of this goldfish print fabric - it's a heavy cotton duck so not sure how it will go for garment sewing but I just couldn't say no when I saw the big roll of it. And you know how it is when you shop at large fabric stores - if you don't buy it when you see it, you'll go back and it will be sold out! When I posted this fabric on facebook & instagram a while back I got heaps of comments about it - the selvedge says it's a Japanese bozuku cotton duck bought from Spotlight. It would be ideal for bags, cushion covers, home dec projects...and hopefully for pencil skirts!

* I'm a member of the Craftsy affiliate program.