Selkie London Skirt

I’m sure you will have seen a while ago that I was a pattern tester for Selkie’s first pattern – the London blouse, skirt and dress. I chose to test the dress version and I blogged about it here. I definitely wasn’t finished with that pattern and when I decided my wardrobe was missing a yellow skirt I knew exactly which pattern I wanted to use!

I was sent this viscose twill to review for Minerva Crafts and I was originally planning to have a go at the Papercut Palisade Pants. I do think this fabric would be perfect for them but I have never made trousers before and as I was on a deadline to send the review in to Minerva before I was supposedly moving house (didn’t happen at that point – it’s a long story!) I decided to make something that I knew wouldn’t take hours of fitting.

The skirt was an easy sew but I still have not got the hang of sewing in a nice zip. In fact, I have started to avoid them. The technique in the Selkie instructions has you baste the back seam together and then stitch around the zip on the inside. Once the zip is in, you unpick the basting stitches to ‘reveal’ the zip sewn inside. I had a problem with this as because it was sewn in, I couldn’t move the zip pull out of the way so when it came to sewing around the zip pull, I have a ‘bump’ in my stitching – not a nice straight line. Anyone got any favorite tutorials or videos for me? I’m assuming I just need to practise my butt off and the only way to do this is to stop avoiding zips! GAH – vicious circle!

Anyway, despite a small wiggle in my zip stitching I absolutely love this skirt – it goes with so many of my tops and is getting lots of wear with boots and leggings. The viscose twill has a nice drape but isn’t too lightweight for skirts/trousers, it is also a really beautiful mustard colour and as it is only £5.99pm, I am tempted to order more and have a go at those trousers without a time limit to worry about!

If you want to read more about the fabric I’ve written more about how it was to work with over on the Minerva Crafts Blog. I hope the start of 2019 is treating you well, we actually did move house this week – I’ve only been talking about it on here since May!! Hooray!