winter sewing: Vogue 9132

For most of last year I kept meaning to make something that wasn't a tulip skirt, but I would panic about wasting fabric and another tulip skirt would somehow mysteriously appear in my wardrobe. After I made number eleven I had to acknowledge that it was getting a bit stupid, and I bought two complementary colours of suedette with the express purpose of making a colour-blocked skirt. I could make a colour-blocked tulip skirt, but I can guarantee you that I won't.

My original thought was to see if I could do something with the Sewaholic Hollyburn, but I'm not 100% sure that's my shape and I didn't want to spend ages futzing about with the pattern only to decide it was too much skirt and I wouldn't wear it. At some point this year I will try the pattern one more time (in something that isn't way too heavy or way too light like my first two attempts), but it wasn't right for this. I ended up buying Vogue 9132 on three grounds: it was a good non-floofy shape, it was easy to colour block, and it would probably be decent evidence that Vogue patterns aren't as hard to make as I think they are.

Here it is! I really like it. This is the first skirt without a waistband that I've liked, probably because it's lined and doesn't have any stupid flappy facings. The lining stays nicely on the inside at all times, the finish is good, and the construction was pretty straightforward. There are a couple of slightly awkward curves, but nothing beyond the wit of The Gnome. Note to self: Vogue Patterns are not that hard. No, you didn't know what to do with them when you first bought a couple because they said "Easy Options" on the packet (hahahahaha), but that was literally a year and a half ago and none of these things are scary anymore.

The skirt takes barely any fabric. I bought a metre of each colour and I still have most of the lighter and a fair amount of the darker left over. I could definitely make another one of these skirts with the colours reversed were I so inclined (I'm not, but still). I had some lining in my stash that matched the light colour almost perfectly, and I was feeling very smug about this until I tried to cut it out and realised I didn't have enough. The lining is now a not entirely fetching combination of light mauve and incredibly bright turquoise, because that's the only other thing I could find. Sure, I could have waited and gone shopping for something that matched beautifully, but I didn't, because of course I didn't.

I did take inside-out pictures, but I took them on my phone which then died for the second time in two months and has been sent back to the good people at Virgin Mobile who claimed they fixed it last time. So no lining pictures. Sigh. Honestly, you're not missing much; the colours are, as you might imagine, weird-looking, and I haven't yet got over my tendency to do massive hems on linings because I'm paranoid it'll be visible when I walk.

I used a regular zip in this skirt, which felt like a huge novelty. I haven't used a regular zip in a skirt or dress since I learned how to put in a concealed zip, and I probably ought to use them occasionally seeing as I have a giant bag of them in the cupboard.

(Also, yes, the back of this skirt is quite wrinkly. Such things happen when you spend nearly an hour on a bus.)

I really like the shape of this skirt and I'm sure I'll make more of them. The pattern comes with another view that looks basically like this one would if you wore it with the side seam at the front, but I'm less keen on that. I'm tempted to have a go at making one up in a single colour to see if that works; either it'll look like interesting detail or it'll just look a bit weird, and I'm honestly not sure which.

To finish, here is me giving a really haughty look to my footstool for some reason:

How dare you, footstool. This is my shot.