Self-drafted skirt finished

I made this skirt (photo will be posted soon, I promise!) from a piece of crappy solid olive green cotton or cotton/poly (? - it wasn't marked on the bolt) bottomweight Jo-Ann's fabric. It was the only thing I could find that coordinated with a pink/orange/goldenrod/olive long sleeve t-shirt that I have. I'd been wearing that shirt mostly with jeans, because it doesn't really go with much else in my closet.

Speaking of the shirt, it's a RTW one that I bought at Port Boutique in Portland, ME. I love the shop, and buy almost all my RTW pants there. I even have pretty good luck finding tops and dresses there that fit reasonably well. This one needed a little help, though - I took it in on the side and sleeve seams, serging off about 3/4" of the seam allowance from wrist to hip. Now the sleeves don't droop down (as much - the cotton knit tends to relax as the day goes on) when I push them up to wear as 3/4 length sleeves.

I used Elizabeth Allemong's instructions in European Cut to draft the skirt.  I took all my own measurements, even though she advises against it, because it was late at night and my husband was asleep.  (And I think I probably did at least as good a job as he would have.)  It took me two muslins to get a finished basic skirt pattern that I can use from now on.  I need to increase the CF/CB and side seam allowances as this skirt has only 1/4" allowances (I had to make very narrow seam to get enough wearing ease in the skirt) and I could stand to lower the front waistline about 3/4", but otherwise the fit is pretty darn good.

The only downside to the whole project is that I couldn't find a zipper to match.  I ended up using a light greenish yellow zipper from JAF.  Since then, however, I stumbled across Dawn's blog post about ZipperStop and I've ordered their color card (which has a ginormous assortment of YKK zipper tape colors to choose from).  The zippers are very reasonably priced (provided you order several at a time to reduce the shipping cost per zipper), and I'm looking forward to going through my stash to identify the upcoming sewing projects that will need zippers so I can place an order.

I have some great hot pink sandals that go with the outfit, but at the moment they clash someting fierce with my bright red toenails, so I just wear a pair of brown slip-on casual shoes for work or running errands.

I'm thinking of making a coordinating (not *matching*) headband with some of the leftover skirt fabric. (I am also considering making a matching "Mini-Me" skirt for my daughter - pretty soon she will be too old to be caught dead wearing what Mom is wearing). Actually, I've made the headband, but I need to figure out how to embellish it so it doesn't *look* like a matching headband. Maybe I'll add some knitted flowers or fabric rosettes to the headband.