…designs with whimsy
…designs with whimsy

Swing Skirt, olive

Front and back

Once upon a time, I was gifted some olive terry knit. What to do with it…I know: a skirt! Olive seems like a serious color, like you mean business when you wear it. (Okay, maybe not so much, but that’s what I thought when I first handled it, trying to decide how to best put it to use.)

And recently, when I was visiting a fellow artisan’s pad, she offered me some scraps of an embroidered jean jacket. Oooh, fun!! I love that the embroidery was lively and colorful! So was the denim, as you can see in the photos below.

It took just a few days to determine that my olive terry and embroidered jean material would make a good pairing. I chose to make a skirt because I hadn’t made one before and I thought the shorter length and heavier fabric would carry the jean appliqué without much hassle.

When I had the front and back panels of the skirt sewn together, I tested where to place the appliqué material for full effect and best result. And then went to work straight stitching the embroidered appliqué material onto the skirt panels.

Attaching the waistband was relatively easy, although I used pins. This lead to two problems: 1) they sometimes snagged the elastic and 2) pins buckled/stretched the elastic and the material. No bueno! Next time, I’ll use these really cool clips I got years ago on a trip to Germany. I also learned that marking the 1/4-way parts on the elastic would have made it easier (to marry those marks where every panel of the skirt met.

Pattern Name/No., Sourceswing skirt, Alabama Chanin
SizeXXL
Fabricolive 100% cotton terry
Threadnavy
Embellishmentembroidered jean applique w/straight stitch
Custom Notesfound original to be too long; shortened to 20″