Tartan circle skirt and a bow top

My coat is coming along nicely, but while I am still busy with it, I’ll post some pics of the outfit I made last spring. I did not post it then since it suits better for the autumn.

the circle skirt

This skirt is a basic circle skirt I drafted myself. The fabric is tartan from Calico Laine. I really like this fabric. It is polyester-viscose mix which drapes wonderfully, doesn’t wrinkle badly and doesn’t seem to pill.

Circle skirts always take a lot of fabric. I have usually cut the circle skirts horizontally in two parts. However, the width of the fabric then determines the length of the skirt and I wanted to have a longer one. Turning the pattern 90 degrees and cutting the skirt vertically would have worked. Unfortunately, it would have taken too much fabric (more than I had, in fact). Finally I decided to do something different and cut the skirt on bias. It is a circle, so now instead of having the bias on the side seams, it is on the center back and the center front.

The zipper is on the left hand side. I was feeling a bit lazy, so instead of two side pockets I decided to only have one on the right side seam. This way I did not have to do the zipper and the pocket on the same side which is always a bit pain.

The bow tee

Bows are in at the moment, so I made a simple long-sleeved t-shirt and decorated it with a bow. I took a pattern from an old t-shirt I had and sewed it up using navy blue viscose jersey. I made the bow in two parts. At first I sewed up a little loop and then I folded a longer strip into something resembling a bow and slipped it in. I stitched the bow in place by hand.

I think this t-shirt looks particularly nice when worn with v-neck cardigans. This time, however, I tried wearing the skirt and the tee with the cashmere cardigan that I refashioned some time ago.