Not to be outdone

I've been sewing, too: a patchwork curtain for our glass-paned bedroom door, and a skirt for Daughter.  Lots of blue (long live making use of every scrap of fabric...).  Both these are from Stitch By Stitch by Deborah Moebes again.  :-)

The curtain --

First, pick out various fabrics that somehow go together.  Cut out loooong strips and sew them together.

Next, cut these panels on the bias; half the panels going one way, the other half the other way.  Sew them together in a zigzag.  Try and align the seams.

After you do this a gazillion times, you have two panels looking something like this:

All that's left to do now is to sew them together in the middle, make tabs to hang it with, and then use a large enough piece of white cotton to line the back with. Which, of course, is much harder than it sounds, what with trying to measure everything out and not having a big enough table for it so having to use the floor meaning trying to dodge curious cats and children.  Also, the cotton for the lining was cheap and heavy, so it was a fair bit of manual labour by then.  And I ran out of thread on my spool 20 cms. before the very end.  Still, the result is worth it!

The skirt --

As you might notice, I still had a bit of fabric left from the curtain.  Enough of each (except the cheap heavy cotton), to make squares for a patchwork, gathered skirt. First, try to find some sort of pattern that is colourful but not eyewatering:

The hardest part of this skirt was actually trying to remember which square came where. I had little piles of squares for each row, with strict instructions on top to Daughter not to move them, since they were In Order.  She's a good girl, and didn't move them.  :-)  Sew each line of squares together (again with the notes of Do Not Touch!).  Then baste stitch the top of the second row in two lines, which you then use to gather the fabric until it's the same length as the first row.  Pin in place - a time-consuming but very necessary affair! - and sew that to the first row.  Repeat with the next two rows and you get this:

Repeat for the back, sew them together, put a properly wide elastic band at the top, hem the bottom, et voilà!  A beautiful Daughter wearing a beautiful skirt!

Even better, a beautiful Daughter wearing a beautiful skirt that wants to move!

And next up: a wrap skirt for Mom.  That is, if I remember to buy tape so I can tape the pages of the pattern together.  Also, if I can manage to extrapolate the pattern to my size, since the sizes provided only go up to size Extremely Fit Person.  And my Wii keeps telling me I'm not quite there yet.