Ena & the Sandbridge Skirt

I always thought I’d join every single pattern test for Adrianna from Hey June Handmade, but unfortunately I had to pass on both the Willamette and the Key Largo. Luckily for me, I finally had the time to join the latest Hey June pattern test for the Sandbridge Skirt.

The Sandbridge Skirt is a classic denim skirt, sitting at the low waist. The pattern comes with the traditional five pocket style, a fly and belt loops. It’s actually designed to be a raw-hem skirt, but as you can see I chose to add 1/2″ and to hem the skirt. And has you might have guessed, I’ve made the short version.

Surprisingly enough, I had the perfect denim in my stash – leftovers from this slub stretch denim from Indiesew that I used for my Jamie Jeans by Named Patterns. I was so happy when I realized that I had *just* enough left for a skirt! Dou you know the feeling when you think that a garment cost you a certain amount of money – and suddendly it feels like it only costs you half the amount, since you manage to squeeze a second garment out of the same fabric? Sooo good, right? I used some soft quilting cotton scraps for the pockets and the bias binding for the waistband. Even more scrap busting!

Sewing the Sandbridge isn’t too complicated – it only takes some time, because of all the topstitching required. Switching threads takes time! You have the option to topstitch every seam twice to make the skirt look even more professional, but I skipped that part, with the exception of the curved seam along the fly.

I made a size 2, adjusted the length to be able to hem the skirt and took out about 1/2″ / 1.3 cm at the back yoke and the waistband – I had a little bit of fabric bunching up at the back seam, just above the pockets.

I have to admit that I messed up a lot while sewing the skirt, and it was entirely my own fault. I was rather busy and was sewing the skirt late at night over the course of nearly two weeks. I topstitched the two back pockets together, I messed up the fly and the zipper, I had troubles with my bar tacks and so on. In the end I took the skirt with me to Lofoten to my in-laws, where I finished it on my mother-in-laws sewing machine. It’s definitely not a bad machine, but I forgot how much I had gotten used to my Janome Skyline s7.

Using a different machine caused my topstitching to look much worse (you can see the difference when comparing the topstitching on the fly, sewn with my Janome, and the topstitching at the waistband), my false overlock seams weren’t as neat as usual and everything just took more time. I didn’t even try to add the belt loops – we’ll see if I’ll add them later.

The weather in Lofoten wasn’t too nice last weekend – gray, rainy and cold most of the time. I made the best of it and dressed for a real Norwegian summer, including my new crocheted hat. You might remember that I’m a sample sewer for Lila-Lotta, a fabric designer for the German fabric manufacturer Swafing. Through Lila-Lotta I was given a crocheting set from MyBoshi, including wool and an instruction. I chose the hat “Ena” and petrol-coloured wool. The wool is the “No.1” wool from MyBoshi, which consists of 70% polyacryl and 30% wool. I’d prefer 100% wool or cotton, but the wool feels nice and is easy to work with, perfect for a beginner.

Crocheting the hat with the help of the instruction and the videos on the MyBoshi homepage wasn’t difficult at all and didn’t take very long. While crocheting the hat I didn’t have a crocheting needle at hand and asked my father to buy one, since he had to go to the nearest town anyway. And he got me the nicest wooden crocheting needle, telling me that he didn’t want to buy an ugly palstic needle for me. Isn’t that sweet? And I really like my new hat! What do you think?

You can buy the Sandbridge Skirt here, it’s on sale until Sunday. Don’t forget to check out the tester round-up on Adrianna’s blog to get some inspiration! I guess the blog post wil be up tomorrow.

– This blog post is linked to the German blogger party RUMS. –