When it was decided that we would all be sewing pieces inspired by the Spring 2014 runway, my mind immediately panicked. Runway? I can honestly say I have never even so much as glanced at a series of runway photos, let alone determined an outfit based on what I saw (I’m not saying this in an ~ooh, I’m so cool I just don’t even pay attention to fashion~ way, more like, yo clueless!). Furthermore, it’s difficult for me to grab “inspiration” from something without just blatantly copying it. I spent an entire month agonizing over designers, pouring over runway sets at style.com (holy crap, there are a lot of them) and wringing my hangs over what to make.
Then I discovered Alerbta Ferretti.
I still don’t know who this designer is, exactly, but the entire runway show is magical. Bright, saturated colors! Crisp white accents! Flowers! Stripes! This is the kind of inspiration I can get behind! I decided to make myself a *wearable* (emphasis on wearable ;)) version of my favorite look.
I used this amazingly bright orange stripe cotton sateen from Mood Fabrics and the Kelly skirt pattern to make my runway-inspired skirt. I just love love LOVE the bright colors of the stripes, and how they are all different thicknesses. It’s not quite the same colors as the inspiration skirt – it’s way more happy springy! Yay spring colors! I agonized for a long time on how to cut the stripes – where each color and wide stripe should hit. I used the inspiration photo to help me decide how to cut the waistband (it was originally going to be a mess of stripes on it’s own, but I like it as one solid, thick stripe!), and was careful to match up the stripes along the side seams, the button front, and the pockets.
The fabric is described as a lightweight cotton sateen, but it’s weighty enough to work as a bottom weight. There is definitely some texture in the weave, and it stretches quite a bit. I made sure to stabilize the waistband and button placket so the fabric would keep it’s shape in those areas, and used a long stitch on my machine for all the topstitching. It presses very well – really easy to get a sharp crease in there, yeah! – but it also tends to leave pin holes. For areas that needed to be pinned together and topstitched (such as the button band and inside of the waistband), I fused the pieces with a long strip of stitch witchery instead of pinning; this keeps everything in place and makes topstitching SO much easier!
Since my skirt is so bright and colorful, I went the boring route with my top and made a classic button-down shirt. I used this Theory lightweight cotton shirting from Mood Fabrics and Butterick 5526 as my pattern. This shirting was a DREAM to work with, by the way – it presses and sews really nicely, which is important with this sort of pattern. It does wrinkle pretty aggressively, though – when I pulled my big prewashed piece out of the dryer, it was basically wrinkled into a giant ball. Yikes!
Anyway, as far as the shirt is concerned – nothing really groundbreaking here. It’s a basic princess seamed shirt, although I did try to jazz things up a little by adding some white topstitching. What I like about this pattern is that it is very plain – which means I can make it into a millioooooon other shirts, using more fun fabric! I’ve been eyeballing the shirting on Mood’s website for so long, it’s good to know that I finally have a pattern I can put them to use with. Plus, if they’re anything like this fabric (aka, soft as angel’s wings), then I can just die happy.
I know my outfit isn’t quite as fashion forward as what I could have done, but I am elated with how both pieces turned out and I can’t wait to give them some proper wear to welcome spring in with loving arms. Come on, spring! I know you’re lurking back there somewhere, time to come out of hiding!
