A Mabel Skirt (+ some tricky pattern placement)

When Colette first released her pattern range for knits I jumped in feet first, wallet WIDE open and bought both patterns PLUS the sewing with knits book.

When her second knit dress pattern came out I bought that too. And then I didn't sew any of the patterns. Hmmm...curious. I'm not sure why this is the case given that I LIVE in knits and the style of both dresses appeals to me.  I think there's some tricky (for me) construction elements in the dresses (elastic waist - argh) so I've balked at the thought on embarking down that road. One day...maybe?

And then one day I was browsing in (you guessed it) Tessuti and saw this digitally printed FABULOUS ponti and I KNEW it'd make a great Mabel Skirt. The pattern calls for less than 1m of fabric so I felt it was OK to splurge on something that a bit fancy. At $49/m this is definitely the MOST expensive fabric I've ever bought...but then I have similar RTW skirts in my wardrobe that I've paid more for so justified it is. I love when a good self-enable when it comes to shopping.

I have tried to make a similar skirt to this without a pattern (twice) and let's just say epic fail doesn't even cover how wrong I went.  Overall I think this is a pretty good pattern for me - the fit is pretty good and it's super simple to sew. I will definitely be making a few more of these babies that's for sure. I already have two more versions swimming around in my head.

The Mabel pattern comes with three variations - version A being the most simple.  That said it's UBER mini so I had to lengthen it by a whopping by 15cms (I'm just under 5ft 8"). I used one of my existing RTW ponti skirts to make sure I got the length spot on. 

Before hacking into my fancy fabric I actually made a toile *gasp*. The waistband on the toile was a bit "too comfy" (aka loose) and the pattern doesn't include any elastic and relies on negative ease (and big guts I'm guessing) to hold this baby up. I made a straight XL and the waistband wasn't going to last the day with me, let alone 5 minutes. I tried make the waistband a size smaller but it was still not snug enough for my liking. Noone needs a pants-dropping incident in the office let me tell you.

I thought I could try adding some clear elastic into the waistband as a means of offering some support and I'm so happy to report that this actually worked. I recut the waistband to a size XL and overlocked the elastic to the inside of the waistband and then topstitched it down to ensure it didn't move around. Hurrah! It took me a few goes to get this right but I'm totally owning overlocking clear elastic now.

My only issue with this pattern...or probably the fabric was that no matter how I laid out the skirt I was going to have either bright arrows and glowing squares pointing to my "lady parts" and on my caboose. I probably should've thought about pattern placement before I laid down my big wad of cash, hey?  Ooops.  We've jokingly called this dress the "flaming V-jay-jay dress" at home and I think you can see why.

I'm super happy with this skirt. It's perhaps a little tight over my hips and bum, but I have big hips and a big bum and I'm totally fine with that. It fits no differently than my RTW skirts and I would always wear a longer top over a skirt like this...so I'm happy.

So, confession time. What's the most you've ever spent on a meter or yard of fabric?