Great British Sewing Bee 1 hour challenge – week 7

Yesterday the Great Britsh Sewing Bee ended, and if you didn’t know already, Charlotte won.

I’m still working on my final GBSB challenge, but I thought I should let you know about my week 7 challenge – the Red Cherry Outfit.

Yes, outfit! I set myself a hard challenge of making a self drafted, fully lined skirt, with in seam pockets, and a matching neck tie which doubles up as a hair tie. We don’t do things by halves here at Champers Towers!

Anyway, here it is …

Details:

Skirt:

Fabric: 100% cotton, red cherry and green leaves on a black background print, by Robert Kaufman
Pattern: Self drafted design
Style: Pleated skirt, fully lined with solid red, light weight cotton fabric, with 2 in-seam pockets.

Neck Tie:

Fabric: Same as above
Pattern: Same as above
Style: Straight tie with rounded corners, based on my Ghislaine Chelsea pattern.

The skirt is lined with red cotton (I know, I’m becoming very radical theses days!), and has an invisible zip closure at the back. There are 2 in-seam pockets. I did toy with adding slanted pockets, but I only had 2 metres of fabric and I wanted to make sure I had enough to make a couple of neck ties and a waistband just in case the waist didn’t work out.

Speaking about the waist, this is a very close fitting waist, and luckily the pleats were handled in such a way, I didn’t need to add a waist band, leaving a clean line.

The red cotton was recycled from the lining of a dress I made a couple of years ago, which I never wore. So it’s good that the fabric didn’t go to waste. I added a jumper, and there we have an entire outfit made with less than 2 metres of fabric.