Double the stripes: shirt and skirt

SO MANY STRIPES! I ordered this striped jersey fabric a few weeks back from Fabric.com.  It is such nice fabric, soft and comfortable!

This week I decided to use it up because I really wanted some casual spring additions and these looked like they would be easy projects... which turned out to be true!

First up is the Plantain shirt by Deer & Doe that was made in approx. 2 hours.  This shirt pattern is great because it can be short sleeve, 3/4 length, long sleeve, have patch on elbows, etc.  What makes it even more than great is that it is completely free! She has this Plantain t-shirt pattern for free online.  This is a great beginner apparel project, so go try this out!

I actually wore this shirt to work today though I'm not sure if people could tell that it was a shirt that I sewed... There is ONE person who did figure it out pretty quickly though, my awesome manager who is a much more advanced sewer than I.

I really like this shirt because it has a lot of movement, comfortable without it looking slubby... so it is still appropriate for "smart casual" dress code at work and good for this transitional weather.

 Now on to the skirt! Actually, this is a second attempt with this skirt as I wasn't completely sure how it would lay once I was done.   The width of the fabric is double my natural waist size. The first run with this fabric for this skirt I kept it overly simple where I had the top folded over with an elastic in between but the top of the skirt was way to bulgy and just did not look flattering with this specific jersey fabric because it is actually really thick. This is the tutorial that is similar to what I originally attempted with this fabric.  If the fabric was not as thick and bulgy it would have been fine.  So, I ripped the seams up and went a different route.  I sewed around the waist of the skirt to gather it up, then sewed it to a circle waist band fabric piece.  Then I used a wide elastic band just slightly smaller than my waist and folded the waist band fabric over that to enclose it.  This was much flatter at the top and also much more flattering.  Even with just about starting over on the skirt, it really didn't take long either.  If I had not screwed up, maybe like 1.5 hours?

Warm weather is on the way, hooray! AND, it is almost Friday!