Mojo rehab: part 1.

I've come to the realisation that right now, with two preschoolers at home, and sewing time limited to the evenings that I can be bothered getting off the couch, I need to focus on simple projects. I have a huge line up of coats and jackets I'd love to try my hand at, but the reality of the situation is that right now I have neither the time nor the energy to devote to them, and chipping away at something for weeks on end is not the type of sewing fix I'm in need of right now. I do need some sort of fix, though; and this is something that I'm really coming to realise after such a long sewing drought - I'm a far happier person when I make the time to sew. Soooo much happier - I don't go to bed resentful about the fact that I haven't done anything for myself (other than eat chocolate biscuits...ahem...) and so I'm an all-round more pleasant person for my family to be around.
So...with this in mind, I traced out BWOF 09-2009-131. I used a buttery-soft stretch denim that has been maturing nicely in my stash for...erm....maybe about 12 years? I remember buying it for a Vogue pencil skirt pattern, on a huge city-wide fabric buying mission with my sewing friend Ange many years ago. I'm pretty sure the same fabric buying mission also saw us buying a whole lot of shiny black faux leathery stuff to make ridiculously tight pants for a party we were going to that night. Fuelled by far too much coffee (me) and far too many cigarettes (her) we sewed up 3 pairs: hers, mine, and another friend's, before heading out for a great night. It frightens me enormously to imagine what those pants would look like on me now.....

Anyway, enough of the trip down memory lane. The skirt sewed up easily, and would have been even easier (and looked more like the original) if I'd paid attention to the instructions and not presumed that I knew what I was doing. After I'd attached what I thought was a waistband facing, I looked at the diagram and realised that my facing was in fact supposed to be a contour waistband with belt loops. Oops. Anyway, it transpires that it fits as a facing too, so that wasn't a big drama. I also put the zipper in the centre back purely out of habit, but according to Burda, it's supposed to go in the side seam. Meh...

I cut a 36, and ended up taking in the sides at the waist by about an inch each side, tapering to nothing at the hip. The fit's ok, but I need to tweak something to stop my butt stealing fabric from the front and making the side seams pull to the back. It's not really noticeable unless you're a sewing geek, so it's really just an observation for next time.
I edged the pockets with bias strips of a green japanesey print cotton I had in stash; and used the same fabric to face the waistband and line the pocket flaps. Since I accidentally ommitted the waistband, I played around with top stitching at the waist and hem to give the skirt a bit more visual interest.

All in all, a pretty good pattern; slightly strangely drafted in that the front skirt piece is wider than the front, meaning that the side seams are ever so slightly pushed towards the back of the body. I'm still undecided about buttons - you can see the chalk lines on the pockets where I pondered doing buttonholes, but I quite like the flaps unadorned.

Anyway, sewing-mojo-rehab part one completed. I've got a few more quick and easy projects in the works, so hopefully I'll be back in blogland on a more regular basis. Onwards and upwards!