Have you ever been to a buffet and piled up your plate with a mountain of food that you will never eat?  You know, the "eyes bigger than your stomach" phenomenon.  This skirt was my Chinese buffet.  I put way too many egg rolls on my plate....

Sew Mama Sew hosted the Super Online Sewing Match (which is in no way similar to the Great British Sewing Bee...so don't even go there).  Talented sewists were selected to participate in each challenge and the pool was whittled down until one winner was left.  If you would like to read about the entire match from beginning to end, click here.  I waited eagerly for each challenge and loved reading through each talented entry.

There is also a Super Online Sewing Community Match which anyone was welcome to join.  All you had to do was select one (or all ) of the challenges to complete and upload a couple of pics to the Flickr pool.  The very first challenge was to design and sew your own a-line skirt from Deborah Moebes' Craftsy class...which I had already taken and completed two skirts.

I immediately started looking for fabric and ran across a beautiful (but blindingly bright) yellow tweed wool.  It was on sale (not a surprise) and I scooped up two yards for around $4.00.  My fuchsia lining was about $6.00, so I spent $10.00 for my materials.

The deadline is (or was, depending on when you are reading this) September 10th.  And of course I didn't get started until a couple of weeks before the deadline.  But I had done this before, it would be a breeze!

My breeze quickly escalated to hurricane force winds.

My tweed was woven extremely loose so I opted to underline instead of lining it.  I left the bottom part free when stitching my underlining and tweed together.  It went together so easily!  I even managed to match my plaid!  I've steered clear of plaids or stripes because I am beyond anal about everything matching up and I feared I couldn't do it...but I did!



I mean, it's still not perfect, but I think it is pretty well done for my first try.

Since I was entering this into a competition, I knew my inside needed to be as finished as the outside.  I created a facing out of my tweed and finished it with bias tape.  I also used the bias strips to finish my seams.  I was so proud!



My plaid even match up here as well.  There was no way I wouldn't win something!

Then came the hem.  And my inexperience working with thick fabrics that fray faster than you can say "shreds" came through.

I first tried bias tape around the hem.  It turned out...well...hideously.  My lining was somehow shorter than my outer fabric.  I let my skirt hang for a day or two and then evened everything up.  It still didn't match up.






It hung so straight!  Not really.  Bailey wanted in on the picture taking action also...





Here it is from the side.  I felt a little like a wilted upside down tulip.  Phoebe was helping by chasing the threads hanging off of it.

I tried turning the hem up with the intention of stitching  the bias covered edge to the underlining.  That was just as disastrous because I couldn't ease the hem in at all.  I cut the entire hem off and headed out in search of hem tape or lace.  That was today.  The deadline is tomorrow.

I found hem lace in another totally different shade of pink (this skirt is beginning to look like a circus).  I got it stitched on and then hand stitched my hem up.  I had never used hem lace or tape, so there was some winging it involved (too lazy to look it up...I figured I couldn't hurt the skirt at this point!).


It worked!  My hand stitching isn't perfect (and I normally pride myself on my hand stitching skills...not this time).  But it is now hemmed.  And I'm not redoing it.

The skirt is heavy enough to wear in the Siberian winter.  I won't be wearing it anytime soon since we are still hanging out in the 80's.  I would go back and get some better pictures since it is a competition, but the skirt is hot.  My house is hot.  I'd swelter running back and forth between the camera and the living room.  And that would definitely not make a pretty shot.

Now let's talk shoes!!!  I bought these from J. Crew about three years ago.  They are my favorite shoe.  Suede?  Wedge heel?  Orange?  Pink?  What is there not to love???  Except with my arthritisy feet I can't wear them longer than about 3 minutes.  I just collect pretty shoes to look at and clomp around in Danskos the rest of the time.





Ok, I'm off to try more pictures.  I just looked at the other fabulous entries.  One washed out picture of me standing in my unvacuumed hallway won't win much.  At least I moved my dead and misshapen duct tape dress form dressed in a purple sweater and Halloween skirt out of the way...








If you would like to see the other entries, visit the Flickr pool here.  See why I need better pictures?