A million dollar free skirt

Hello. I'm over at my blogging home away from home, Oliver + S, where I've tinkered with a free pattern of theirs. You can click below to go take a look at the tutorial:

As I was sewing the layered skirt from Sew Sweet Handmade seen here, it occurred to me that the idea of a drawstring casing could be applied to any skirt.

The Oliver + S Onstage Tutu is the perfect candidate, as it's designed to have a light overskirt made of tulle or similar fabric. I had just a little bit of fabric leftover from my fancy Weekend Getaway dress (blogged here)...

...and I'd always thought it would be perfect as a fancy miniature skirt.

Then I had an exquisite little card of France Duval Stalla ribbon and lace that was gifted to me by the lovely Helena. I'd already used a bit of the silver dot ribbon on the bottom of these grey pants, and I discovered to my delight that the ribbon and the lace went perfectly with my leftover fabrics.

I was still scarred by cutting my dress to get all those blasted lines of dots square. So this time I just sliced the straggly edges off my remnant to achieve a rectangle that was as wide as the remnant allowed, and about the right length.

The cotton underskirt has a single seam at the centre back. The pattern (which is FREE if you didn't already catch that bit) has a neat way of reversing the seam at the top so that the fold over waistband is still perfectly neat. Genius. You could pay good money for a skirt pattern with less impressive instructions than this one.

My overskirt is pieced with a seam at each side as that was how the fabric remnant forced it to be.

 
Needless to say, she adores this skirt. We tried to get some decent modelled shots before the deadline of the Oliver + S submission, but it was insanely windy and most of the photos looked like this:

Oops!

Still, that there is a completely free skirt. Fabric and elastic from the stash, free pattern and some gifted trims. When I can be as Christmas thrifty as that with my leftovers then surely I can reward myself with some more fancy fabric, right?!

I'm thinking Santa really needs to know about this metallic wool at Tessuti:

 It's been just over a year now that I have been officially contributing to the Oliver + S blog and it's truly such an honour. You can see all my previous projects for them here with links to each blog post.
So, yes, the disclaimer would say that I receive payment for my contributions and thus I'm probably biased. But I was hooked way back when my supply line was still very tenuous. :)

If you've not tried any Oliver + S patterns then you can help yourself to a few free ones and then get yourself a serious habit!