Bright stripes cord skirt

I look the opportunity last weekend to finish off my New Look 6030 skirt. All I really had to do was finish the yoke and install the zip - both techniques which I've become a bit more familiar with recently! One thing which I do like is the way the patterns recommend finishing the yoke - by stitching through the existing seam, so that there is no top stitching visible when you are sewing the yoke facing to the front. I then finished the back with a zig zag stitch, just to neaten it up.

This has probably been my best (and most pain free) zip installation yet - I managed to not sew random bits of skirt into the zip, and the little flap to cover the zip looked good too. I'm happy that I'm finally getting the hang of this one...!

As the skirt is quite neat fitting, I've decided that I need to reinforce the all the seams with some top stitching, as I did on the front seam. I probably should have done that right at the start, but the pattern didn't suggest it.

I wore the skirt out that evening, and no-one pointed and laughed - always a positive sign! It's been hard to get decent photos - when I leave the house in the morning it's dark, and when I come home again at night it's dark again - horrible! I'll hopefully persuade the hubby to take some for me at the weekend when I finally emerge to get to glimpse a bit of sunshine - so those are to follow!

Sewing with a striped pattern - and with cord - has been a completely new challenge. When working with stripes, the yoke is something I'll definitely be thinking about in the future, and whether the curve should be relaxed a bit, or whether I want to cut another piece, and 'hide' the seam under my belt carriers.

One other thing which I didn't think about when preparing my fabric is that cord fabric has a nap to it - check out this helpful post to understand what that means, and this one when thinking about sewing with cord. Basically, all the pattern pieces should be cut out in the same direction. This was not something I considered! However, now that it's all together, I notice that the brown stripe on the front of the skirt looks a little darker on one side than on the other.  If you were to turn the skirt upside down - it's the opposite way round. The skirt also feels softer in different directions - on one side it feels softer if you run your hands up, on the other side it feels softer when you rub your hands down. This is because I cut my pattern pieces out in different directions, and so the nap is wrong.

To be honest, this isn't a massive concern for me - the colour thing isn't particularly noticeable, especially as the stripes are so bright, and neither is the feel. But it's something that I will definitely want to get right next time around when I make it for Esther - so I'll be referring to those links again.

Watch this space for photos...