completed: the colette ginger skirt

ah, the colette ginger skirt. a project that should have been quick & simple (do i hear the warning bells ringing in your head yet? how about now?). of course, “quick & simple” isn’t really an option for me, so i added a few extra steps to make myself feel like i was accomplishing something. and herein lies the rub: my two hour skirt ended up turning into a 4 hour skirt. and, as much as i’d love to pass this blame on someone else, i can’t. sometimes, we just gotta take this stuff in stride & accept the fact that we make things harder for ourselves. or wait, is that just me? whatever.

the pattern itself was a delight to sew – well-drafted, beautifully fitted, pretty much the same praise you hear about all colette patterns. like i said, the mistakes i made didn’t have anything to do with the pattern – they had everything to do with my modifications. i didn’t make any modifications to the fit; i cut it a straight size 4 and it is perfect. i added boning to the waistband (although i omitted the flannel interlining because the denim i used is pretty thick… oh, and i used plastic boning because my local shop was out of spiral steel. also, i am terrified of spiral steel.) and changed the zipper to lapped application, as previous experiences with invisible zips + thick fabric have kind of been disastuhs.

my fabric is a nice medium-weight, deep indigo denim. i wanted it to have a bit of shape, but i think it’s actually too stiff 😦 hopefully it’ll soften with wash & wear, although looking at the pictures it doesn’t look as weird as i think it does. the waistband is faced with some of the pretty voile i picked up a couple weeks ago – partially because i thought double denim + horsehair + boning would be too much, and partially because i think the voile is pretty & it’s my skirt & i get to do what i want. the seams are all mock flat-felled… i opted for the mock because i thought the denim was too thick for a true flat-fell.

my main issue was with the zipper – i don’t know what i did, but i somehow managed to put it in wrong four times! and it still looks like shit, but i don’t even care at this point because i hate it enough to ignore it. like i said, i couldn’t go with the invisible application due to the thickness of the fabric… and my lapped application i think was just better suited for a zipper that isn’t a heavy metal denim zipper. but, it’s passable & that’s all that matters to me right now. over it.

i do love my skirt, though! i can’t believe it’s taken me this long to make a denim skirt – i’ve been looking for the ~perfect~ one for years now! this will definitely get a lot of wear, it is so comfortable and flattering.

pictures? pictures.

my shirt is washed out due to the OMG SUNLIGHT but this shows the true color of the denim

ahahaha that zipper. h8 u sfm.

waistband

zip

facing :3

seamz

and here is photographic proof that my shirt is actually a nice button-up & not some blinding white… thing:

so fun!

Tags: completed, denim, ginger, skirt