tulip skirt

I wanted to make myself something in order to compensate for the fact that we've had a nutty few weeks. The babies have had growth spurts / feeding frenzies, Joseph has been in an evil mood due to some new molars, and I've had a toothache/sinus infection/spate of new allergies. Sometimes it's easier to get through a rough afternoon when you have a distracting project to focus your energy on: you pop a few motrin, put the homicidal toddler in front of a truck DVD, and nurse one baby at a time (at the sewing machine).

This is Jenny Gordy's tulip skirt pattern from the Winter 2008 issue of Stitch magazine. I made it in what fabric.com called a cotton/rayon faille, but it feels like school uniform quality polyester to me. At $1.99 a yard I'm not complaining. I'm not delighted about the fit; I have to stand up damn straight to avoid some belly vs. waistband conflict. I'm wearing it today and I'm exhausted from the effort. One of the benefits of always having a baby in a sling is that I can slouch and slump and let my poor belly go all over the place and nobody's the wiser. It's kind of interesting to be focused on my stomach instead of my butt as my source of angst. Hello, middle age, I can see you from here!

Anyway.

The skirt went together easily with very few modifications (an inch or so longer, some extra topstitching) but I had a bit of an epiphany while cursing over my machine's inability to make it through one effing buttonhole without getting stuck: I could have installed ten invisible zippers in the time it took make the buttonholes, sew on the buttons, and hand sew the wretched hooks and eyes at the waistband. I really need to man up and get over my issues with zippers.