A little facelift

You might have noticed that things look a little different around here. I did a little revamp of the blog - it was much in need of some good old-fashioned housekeeping.

We now have tabs! Yes, ok, I realize that is probably not such a big deal for most people ~ but the blog was getting a bit unruly, and the tabs will help keep things organized and make it easier to find things. If you are looking for the popular Feliz sew-along, don't panic! It's still here along with all the other sew-alongs - just check out the sew-along tab at the top. There is also a tab for the tutorials I have written up. They should be much easier to find now. Some of the tabs are still under construction, but mostly it's functional.

I have got to thank Miss Heather (a la mode fabric) for so kindly offering to guide me through this as she gave me a bit of her precious free-time one morning. Thanks Heather! You Rock!

Ok, as promised, part 3 of the skort tutorial will be up tomorrow. Happy Sewing!

hexagon madness

See these hexies? Paper backed, hand-basted and then (supposedly) hand-sewn together (haven't done that part yet). Hand sewn anything is usually something I avoid like the plague. Why am I doing it? I have no idea. It's a disease. Really, it is! Lady Harvatine even named it ~ and I have it ~ apparently. I have no clue what I'm going to do with these things.

I blame this all on Heather (a la mode fabric) because she introduced me to them via her flickr group {Handsome} Hexies. And I, having no willpower whatsoever, was immediately sucked in.

These are made of Tanya Whelan's Darla fabric which I really love and never seem to have a purpose for. So pretty.

I know I promised another skort variation, that'll but up in a day or two, promise. I got a little side-tracked with spring cleaning last night instead.

Carry on and Happy Sewing!

And another thing...

I've been going a little crazy with this skort thing - once I get the creative juices flowing it's a bit hard to stop sometimes.

Here's a knit version of the skort. This one is just a little bit different. I decided to cut a circle skirt instead of doing a gather of the bottom tier. (See yesterdays skort stack post for all the nitty gritty). The circle skort sews up about the same as the gathered skorts we did yesterday and uses the same measurements, so please refer back to that post for details.

If you want to copy this version you will need to do a little geometry. Remember the formula for the circumference of a circle? It's 2(3.14)r. (Sorry, I can't figure out how to do the pi symbol

on blogger. Silly blogger.) So to figure out how large to make the circle you calculate backwards solving for 'r'. You already know that the circumference is going to be the measurement of the top tier which was 37" on my skorts. So I need to figure out 'r' in order to draw out the circle. In my case it comes out to approximately 6" if I round up. That's the inner circle. Then I decided to make the skort length 12" and just added an outer circle at 12" to make my pattern.

The resulting half donut pattern ~

Place the pattern along the fold of the fabric and when it's all cut out, we end up with this (folded in half)

All the other parts of the skort are cut out just the same as yesterday. Now you can sew the top tier of the skort onto this circle just as in the skort tute.

Sew it all together following the rest of yesterday's tutorial.

Ta da!

Since this is a knit, I decided to play around with my cover pro for a change. I topstitched this using the cover stitch and that produced a nice effect on the bottom tier and on the waistband. Kind of ready-to-wear-esque.

I decided to leave the hem edge raw and used the cover stitch again. I like the result.The possibilities are endless. You can do this same sort of circle skort in a woven fabric, it doesn't have to be a knit. Since this skort is entirely knit, if you do decide to topstitch with a standard sewing machine, be sure and use a stretch stitch - such as a 3-stitch zigzag for the topstitch to prevent your stitches from breaking when the fabric is stretched.

Whenever I sew with knits, I always get a lot of questions about knits in general. I have gone over a few pointers on sewing with knits at the bottom of a previous blogpost. Coincidentally, Patty Young as also commented on sewing with knits today over on The Creative Connection Blog - click here to read her tips on sewing with knits.

Tune in tomorrow for yet another, less knitty skort variation.

Happy Sewing!