A Failed GBSB Asymmetric Skirt

When I started writing about my sewing journey I told myself I'd share everything, the good the bad and the ugly.

I made this decision because I was sick of seeing people crank out perfection every week without talking about their struggles. 

Well cards on the table..... this skirt made me cry. Not cute cry either, hysterical, sobbing, snot on face crying. [Part might have been PMS but the skirt started it.]

Right so the pictures don't really show it clearly but this is meant to be the asymmetric skirt from the 3rd GBSB book. When they made it on the show it was described as being a very tricky make but I thought I'd give it a whirl. But what I ended up with was a lumpy bumpy mess.

Its supposed to look like this. 

Ya know lovely and swooshy and fabulous.

But instead mine was a hot mess. Now the reason I began to cry was because I felt like a bit of a failure, I'd read the instructions, I'd done everything to the best of my ability and I'd still messed it up! And because I'd actually applied for this series of the sewing bee and had an interview and everything, which meant that chances are I wouldn't have been able to do it then either. 

And that folks is what made me cry. [that and PMS] 

So I ate more chocolate than necessary and watched a few episode of project runway and decided to have my own make it work moment because god knows I did not want to have to throw the beautiful boiled wool away!

Luckily I'd stitched the back seam so I just had to unpick the top from the bottom. The I decided to get rid of the wavy edge part by levelling the whole thing off. I did that by measuring from the waistband down and marking it and from the bottom up on the lower section.

Next I pinned the bottom half to the top half , pleating the fabric to make it fit. Originally they were pinned as inverted box pleats but I found myself liking the wrong side better so I repinned them the right way around.

Fabric wise I used this boiled wool from abakhan's and whilst it was beautiful it was tricky to get the seams to lie flat. I used a lot of heat and ended up cobbling together a clapper from some stray bits of wood in our shed.

Then I did some top stitching and popped in a Zip.

Then I spent about another half an hour battling the seams into submission. I even ended up cutting the darts open to make them sit flatter. I also used a tailors ham and sleeve roll to help with the pressing. 

And voila! A catastrophe made into something nicer. As gutted as I was to fail I actually like this skirt and I think it suits my wardrobe. Plus its lovely and swishy!

Now I am hoping to revisit the GBSB pattern at some point but for the moment I'm just going to take pleasure in this skirt. 

And try and get some more wear out of it before summer gets here! If it ever arrives! 

In other news! 

I have a poorly baby boy! Hes in bed recuperating and hopefully he'll start to feel better soon! It breaks my heart when hes ill.

And I've uploaded a new video to my you tube channel!

Hope you enjoy 

Much Love

Frankie 

xxx