More Fashion For Less

Ahem... and a very cheap fashion model.....

Yep - here I am, all Photoshopped and pretending to be over 5 foot 2. (You won't tell anyone, will you...?)

I'm wearing my newest offering on the pattern front, my A-Line Skirt. I originally made it as a basic skirt pattern for myself (that I could make in a zillion different ways and nobody need know that I only had one pattern). But Lara saw it, and then Tania... and before you know it, everyone was wanting one. It's now graded from size 8 to size 18 (US sizes 6-14).
I wear the size 10, because I like skirts that hang loosely off my hips. If you prefer to wear your skirts fitted around the waist, you can make the size that fits your waist (see that glamorous fashion model, wearing a size 8, below).

The instructions include how to insert the best ever invisible zip and also how to add a feature panel on both summer and winter-weight fabrics (two different methods). It really does make a zillion skirts - long, short, winter, summer, formal, casual..... The finish is tailored but the method is super-easy.

I reckon if you wear skirts to work, this could be the perfect fashion-for-less option for you! You could keep making them slightly differently each time, and nobody would know.... The skirt pattern will be on the website just as soon as I can organise it.

EDITED TO ADD: YOU CAN ORDER IT HERE NOW!

In the meantime, I'll share a bit of the reality behind the gloss of this high-fashion photo shoot.

Yep.. a very small 40-something crafty chick, poncing about in front of a camera while a friend reads out an amusing Facebook conversation. Cracking up.... and being strangely foreshortened....

Another day in Northcote.

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BTW - Nice to be back in the land of the cyber-living. My laptop had a little holiday at the repair shop, but seems much better now, thank you.

Back to the beginning....and then an epilogue. (You already know the middle bit)

Long before the shirred top and long before the trapese line top in my book, I made the bustle skirt, based on a square of fabric. I then started thinking about a way to make one based on a quarter-circle skirt.
Somewhere during the process of playing with calico, I thought, "....Ooh, I could make top this way...". So was the beginning of the trapese line top... and a hiatus in the development of the bustle-skirt idea. It was also the start of the patternfree skirt section in the book.


I only got back to the original idea this week.... and it seems to work!
It's a variation on the panel skirt in my book (only I thought of it before I thought of the panel skirts...). The hemline of this skirt finishes in a point - basically, it hasn't been cut in a curve at the hemline (except a bit of last minute trimming before hemming, just so I don't trip and break my neck on the stairs). It has been shirred randomly across the back - with the shirring in a kind of wildly random cross-hatch on the bottom half. There was a bit of slam-pressing, too. The fabric was a printed linen remnant that I bought for $10 at the Shirt & Skirt Market a few years ago. It was a light "faded denim" colour with red and navy flowers. I dyed it indigo.
And I've been swanning about in it like bustle skirts are the height of fashion. (Yes, I watch too many costume dramas).

Still poncing about...

This time in wrap skirts from my book. I made LOADS of these as I developed the instructions, so I have a seemingly endless supply of wrap skirts to wear to work. As always, there are a few variations on the theme....(If you'd like to make a skirt to fit you, but need a confidence-booster and a bit of help... and a nice girly lunch... come to my Wrap Skirt Workshop on 28th May).And I'm still swanning about in made-in-an-instant pattern-free tops, pretending they're high-fashion designer things. These tops are in the book as well. I also have lots of other variations that are not yet photographed OR in the book. No doubt I'll be posing and poncing about here soon enough, to show those to you.

If you'd like to win yourself a copy of the much-talked-about-in-these-here-parts book, head on over to visit Curlypops and put your name down in her giveaway.

While you're there, you can vote for Cam in the Cosmo Fun Fearless Female awards. I reckon, if anyone deserves this award, it's Superpops. She embraces life and rises to any challenge that it throws her way, she can turn her hand to just about anything crafty, is a super-nice, super-generous (and very fun) person and ....well.... she does GREAT BLOG!

BTW - If you're going to the AQC in Melbourne next week, you can buy my book directly from me there. The lovely publishers have let me jump the gun on the release date (which is supposed to be 1st May). Come and say hello, and pick up a signed (by me...!!?) copy.