New Look 6708: The Eight-Year Skirt Project is Finally Finished

If you only come here for the quilting, be forewarned -- today's post is not for you.  Today's post will be all about how I spent $78 and eight years of my life making a skirt that I will probably only wear a handful of times, using a pattern (New Look 6708, now out of print) that I have no intention of ever making again.  Today I will relate the saga/review the pattern of what my mom and I have been calling "That Dumb Skirt!"  

New Look 6708 Skirt Finish

New Look 6708 (OOP) View B

I made my skirt using New Look pattern 6708, which is out of print from the manufacturer but you can still find uncut used copies for sale.  At the time I'm writing this, you can get a copy of this pattern on Etsy here and I saw a few copies available on eBay as well (This post contains affiliate links).  This A-line, lined Misses skirt with side zipper did not actually take 8 years to sew -- it just got abandoned for long intervals while I was sidetracked by other projects.  If you want to read the post from June of 2015 when I first started this skirt, you can find that here.

I made View B, the above-knee version of the skirt, and I used "Pretty Potent Echinacea" cotton voile fabric from Anna Maria Horner with solid navy cotton voile for the lining.  Although I was unable to find an online source for my skirt fabric in voile today, Anna Maria Horner has reissued this print in new colorways for Free Spirit Fabrics recently, calling it simply "Echinacea," and you can find those on Etsy here.  (Just be aware that the current versions are printed on quilting weight cotton fabric that has more body and less drape than the voile I used for my skirt).  I prewashed both my fashion fabric and my lining fabric prior to cutting out my skirt.

I used Pellon Shape Flex Woven Cotton Interfacing SF101 in White for my waistband and I'm happy with that interfacing choice for the cotton voile, but wish I'd chosen the same SF101 interfacing in Black in hindsight.  Because my fashion fabric is semi-sheer, the waist yoke with the white interfacing behind it looks like a slightly different color than the body of the skirt that has navy lining fabric behind it:

White Interfacing Makes Waist Yoke Look Lighter/Brighter than Navy-Lined Body of Skirt

Ah, well.  It's subtle and no one else is going to notice this or care.  I've only tucked my shirt in to show the top of the skirt for these project review photos; normally the waistband or waist yoke or whatever you want to call it won't even be visible.

Starting the Skirt (Finally)

Skirt Cut Out, Ready to Sew

My mom came over a few days ago to help me overcome the inertia, procrastination, and confusion that has prevented me from making any progress on the OOP(Out of Print) New Look #6708 skirt that I started at the beginning of LAST summer.  Ahem. 

When I abandoned set this project aside back in July of 2015, I had purchased the fabric, lining and notions, and prewashed the fashion fabric and lining (both cotton voiles).  I had sewn up a muslin, which was good because I discovered that the size corresponding to my measurements on the back of the pattern envelope would be WAY too big (the muslin fell off and hit the floor; that's how big it was), and even more importantly, I realized that the fitted yoke at the top of this A-line skirt wasn't shaped at all like me through the tummy area.  I redrafted those pattern pieces until I got a fit I was happy with (basically size 14 at the top of the yoke transitioning to size 12 at the bottom edge of the yoke, but if you just grade from one size to the other you get a weird inverted V shape at the sides instead of a straight seam around your middle that you can attach the skirt to) and made sure that my new yoke pieces would fit at the seams that attach it to the skirt front and back.  And then life, and other projects, intervened...

So here we are, ready to cut out the skirt.  First consideration: I wasn't thinking about this when I picked out my fabric, but this bold, large scale floral print fabric is kind of like a plaid or stripe in that the pattern needs to be perfectly centered on the front and back of the skirt, and perfectly STRAIGHT on the front and back of the skirt, or I am not going to wear this skirt when it is finished.  And the voile is shifty stuff, folks -- the same qualities that make it soft and flowy for a skirt make it scoot all over on the cutting table, especially prone to stretching askew on the bias.  So I made full pattern pieces for the skirt front and back as well as for the yoke front and back, and cut out the skirt the way I would cut out drapery swags from a print fabric.  I centered a row of flowers on the center fold line of the pattern, and carefully shifted the fabric behind the pattern until the same pattern motifs were positioned in the same positions at the edges of the pattern all the way along the hem line and the right and left side seams. 

Skirt Front Cut Out with Pattern Centered

After I cut out the front from a single fabric layer, I used this cut-out fabric piece as my pattern to cut out the skirt back by laying that piece onto my fabric and adjusting the position of until the pattern was perfectly aligned and the top piece "disappeared."  This took a lot longer than just using the cutting layout in the pattern instructions, but it was the only way I could get my pattern centered and straight with this squirmy, wiggly voile.  So the pattern placement is identical on the front and back of the skirt.

Once all the pieces had been cut from the fashion fabric, cutting out the pieces from my solid navy blue cotton voile was a snap.  Since I had already had made a full pattern piece for the skirt front and back, I just cut the lining from a double layer of fabric.

Next dilemma: This pattern specifically suggests lightweight fabrics, sheers, and voiles like mine in the fabric suggestions.  However, the instructions tell you to put in a standard centered zipper through both layers with an ugly rectangle of stitching around the zipper opening that would look terrible from the right side of the finished garment.  Why, oh why, would anyone want to do that?!

Yucky Centered Zipper in Pattern Instructions

Can you imagine how awful that would look, stitched through two layers of semisheer cotton voile?  YUCK!

Inside View, with Exposed Zipper Tape

And if I followed the pattern instructions for the zipper, I would have exposed zipper tape scratching against my skin even though this is a lined garment.  This isn't how store-bought clothes are made, and this is a major pet peeve against the pattern companies.  Why do they give these cheesy instructions for making things that look dorky and homemade instead of writing instructions for professional looking garments that their customers can be proud of?  They are undermining their own customer base by deliberately making it difficult for beginners to achieve good results when following a pattern.  It's very frustrating to feel like only someone with years of experience, who knows which directions to follow and which ones to disregard, can sew a successful garment from a pattern.

So I looked through the RTW (ready-to-wear) skirts in my closet for something similar to what I'm trying to make.  Every single one of them has an invisible zipper at the side seam, and every one of them except one has got the invisible zipper sewn so that the zipper tape is completely enclosed between the fashion fabric and the lining for a clean, professional finish on the inside of the garment. 

Invisible Side Seam Zipper in RTW Skirt, Enclosed Between Lining and Fashion Fabric

That's what I'm going to attempt to do for my skirt.  My sewing technique books recommend leaving the rest of the seam open until after you have inserted an invisible zipper, so my mom wrote that in the pattern instructions for me, crossing out where they told me to sew the side seam below the notch and then noting later in the pattern instructions, after the zipper insertion, when it's time to close the side seam.

I'm a little nervous about the zipper for several reasons.  I've got my Threads magazine article from back issue #179 (June/July 2015) with tips for zipper insertion in tricky sheer fabrics like mine (I'll be stabilizing the seam allowances in the zipper area with strips of fusible interfacing and sewing with a layer of Sulky Solvy water-soluble stabilizer between the voile and the feed dogs of my machine to prevent puckering).  And I've got the fantastic Bernina invisible zipper foot that I've used successfully to sew invisible zippers in home dec pillows.  I'm just not sure whether changing the zipper application will affect anything at that top edge of the skirt, and I'm not 100% clear on how I am going to sew the lining to the zipper tape after I've sewn the zipper to the fashion fabric of the skirt, in order to get that clean finish of my RTW skirts.  But I think I just need to get started, because some of the instructions and illustrations in the pattern don't make sense to me.  With my caroling outfit, I found that some of those instructions make more sense when you have a partially sewn garment in front of you that you can match up to the illustration. 

On My Worktable

Anyway, everything is cut out now except I'm not sure whether I'll use the Pellon lightweight nonwoven interfacing that I already cut out (I think it's P44) or a lightweight woven fusible interfacing (Pellon Shape-Flex SF101) that is less stiff and drapes more like my voile fashion fabric.  I've got my machines threaded up and ready to go with new size 70 Microtex needles and cotton 50/3 Gutterman thread, so my next step is to test machine settings on fabric scraps in case I need to adjust tension, presser foot pressure or (on the serger) differential feed settings in order to get a nice stitch.  The RTW skirts in my closet have 3-thread overlocked seams, but I'll be sewing my seams on my sewing machine first and then using a narrow 2-thread overlock to finish the seam allowances.  That way if I mess something up along the way, I have a chance to rip out my machine stitches and fix it before the serger has trimmed away my seam allowances.  If I was more confident in my garment sewing and fitting abilities, I'd save time by just doing it all in one pass on the serger.  In fact, I have some other fabric stashed away that might work for this pattern.  If the voile skirt turns out to be a wearable success, I may make this up again in the stashed fabric, and I'll be able to serge the seams on the second skirt once I feel comfortable with how the whole thing goes together.  Wouldn't it be nice to have a TNT ("Tried and True") skirt pattern that I could just whip up in different fabrics with variations?  That's the goal, folks!

My kids go back to school a week from today, but historically my design business picks up steam in the Fall, so Back to School doesn't necessarily mean more free time for my sewing projects.  But it's all about finding that balance, right?  At least, that's what I keep telling myself.  Have a great week, everyone!

Too Cool for School Carpool "Tag" Pillow Completed!

The Fancy Mommy's New Carpool "Tag," a 10" x 20" Pillow

I finished something today -- the Too Cool for School Carpool Tag.  It's not really a tag, though; it's a pillow that I'm going to wedge between my dashboard and windshield in the carpool pickup line at school this year so the teacher with the walkie-talkie can let the teacher inside the building know which kids should be sent out to my car.  This started out as an experiment in machine embroidered applique using my new Bernina 750 QE back in January.  Then I cast it aside until I decided to use it for a free-motion quilting practice exercise seven months later, in July.  I didn't like the way the quilting looked from the back side (in hindsight, I should have used a lighter weight bobbin thread with the Superior Threads King Tut in the needle) and I wanted to come up with a way to finish the carpool tag so that I would not have hold it up to the windshield, which is how I came to turn this into a 10" x 20" throw pillow.  I just tested it out, and it fits perfectly between the windshield and dash, stays in place without me holding it, and the lettering is very visible from outside the car.  Perfecto!

Samuel & Sons Dolce Marabout in Candy Apple

I used a leftover piece of red microfiber chenille for the pillow back and a remnant of Samuel & Sons Dolce wool Marabout lip cord trim because I had them laying around -- literally -- and they worked.  Unfortunately, I went ahead and cut my pillow front and back with a standard 1/2" drapery workroom seam allowance before I measured the 5/8" lip on my fancy trim.  Groan...  Way to complicate a simple project, Rebecca! 



Annoying 5/8" Trim Lip

Just about every other decorator trim on the planet has a 1/2" lip so you can just line up the edge of the twill lip with the cut edge of the pillow top, sew close to the cord, and have your pillow finish the correct size.  Note to self: Measure FIRST!  THEN cut!

I decided to hand baste this trim to the edges of my pillow front so I could offset it by approximately an eighth of an inch.  Was this really necessary?  Would we have noticed and missed that 1/4" difference in the finished size of this pillow?  Probably not, but it never even occurred to me to just make the pillow slightly smaller.  I had already ordered a custom down/feather insert for this (feel free to roll your eyes at me), and my supplier already oversizes their inserts by about an inch to ensure that the pillow covers don't sag.  I had also already cut away my corners to prevent the "dog eared" look, so that removed even more space from the pillow cover...  Whatever.

Cutting Away Excess Fabric at the Corners to Prevent "Dog Ears"

Here's what the trim looked like hand-basted to the pillow front:

Offset Trim Hand-Basted to the Pillow Front

From the back side, you can see that the twill lip of the trim cord extends just a bit beyond the seam allowance of the pillow front.  You can also see that I was too lazy to test and adjust my serger tension when I serged the edges of my pillow top.  Ahem.  It looks pretty on the outside, where it counts.

Horrendous Tension Abounds; Trim Basted Offset from Edge

After that, I constructed the pillow as usual.  Oh, but I did test out a different invisible zipper.  In the past, when I wanted to make a throw pillow, I'd just choose whichever invisible zipper at Jo Ann's was the closest color match to my pillow fabric or trim, but a couple of times I had problems with the zippers breaking on those (perhaps due to an insufficiently burly zipper, perhaps due to my sons' pillow fighting battles in the living room).  Anyway, this time I ordered heavy duty #6 bridal gown invisible zippers online from The Zipper Lady (she sells them at retail individually; you do not need a wholesale account) to see if that would work better with my bulky quilted pillow fabric and in-the-zipper-seam trim.  The invisible zippers sold at Jo Ann's are usually #2, intended for lightweight garment fabrics like silk, rayon, etc.  See the difference? 

#6 Bridal Zipper on the Left, Regular Invisible Zipper on the Right

The only bummer is that bridal zippers only come in shades of white, cream, and black.  Well, that and the fact that the Bernina #35 Invisible Zipper foot worked better with the smaller coils of the ordinary invisible zipper. 

Inserting #6 Invisible Bridal Zipper with #45 Invisible Zipper Foot, Coils Too Big for Groove

Next time I'll probably go old school and put the invisible zipper in with my #4D Dual Feed Zipper foot instead.

All's well that ends well, right?  At least SOMETHING is finished!

Ta Da!