A skinny Clemence!

Okay so I should probably start by telling you I'm stupidly proud of this project!

After making a toile of the Megan dress from love at first stitch and realising that the fit is dammed near perfection I decided that I didn't want to invest anymore time into it until I was making it in a beautiful fabric. (I'm hoping Santa might send some pennies my way to help this come true!)

This meant I was left with nothing to sew! YIKES! 

So I moved onto the next pattern in the book , the Clemence skirt! This is the pattern in love at first stitch that you draft yourself, so I carefully took my measurements and made up my pattern! 

Next I needed to choose fabric, and I thought to myself how lovely would it be to use the fabric I won from handmade janes/dragonfly fabrics giveaway yonks ago! 

As you can see it's fairly stunning! It's called "field study" by Anne Marie Horner .However I only had a very very very! Small amount if it! (Due to using most of my winnings on another fabric!)

Anyway I realised fairly quickly that no amount of magic, prayer or ritual sacrifice would make my pattern pieces fit! 

So I sat down with a pencil and paper and worked out the measurements for a "skinny" clemence! 

I decided I'd make the skirt out of this fabric because well for starters it's so darn pretty and secondly it was sat there looking at me! 

Here's my marked pattern pieces according to my technical maths stuff!

And the waistband I cut from a scrap if fabric from a recent (top secret) project! It's actually A dammed good match! 

Sewing French seams! And being that I'm super sad, I say "ooh la lah" after each one! Yes sometimes I even make myself cringe! 

Evenly distributing gathers! 

Waistband on! Now for the zip! 

Insert swearing here! 

Bloody thing went in wonky! Needless to say I ripped it out and re stitched! (Quite proud actually old Frankie would have left it)

And yay a "skinny" clemence! So it doesn't have to beautiful big gathers of Tilly's original but I love it all the same! 

I did three rows of stitching to make a feature hem! 

I had two goes at stitching in the ditch! The first time I might have well be stitching air! 

But I am proud of that zip! My first one using an actual zipper foot (no idea how I coped before!) 

So all in all I love this skirt it's beautiful, it has a crazy print and it's some of my best work to date! I fact I love it that much I'm going to wear it to a birthday party on Saturday! Weather allowing! (Please prepare yourself for photos of me rocking this beauty!)

Now I still can't wait to start my actual proper clemence , but I think I'm going to do mimi blouse first (I have the idea for a lil set in my head!) 

Much love

Frankie

Xxx

P.s if someone wants to send me two metres of this fabric if love to make the full skirted version!