Sew Serendipity - Skirt

I love this fabric is it 100% cotton chambray. I original made it into a gathered skirt for my daughter  but after a year of it sitting at the bottom of her drawer I realized she was never going to wear it. So I unpicked the skirt thinking I could reuse the fabric for smaller projects.
Inspiration to use it to make a skirt for myself came from looking through Sew Serendipity. All the skirts in this book are made from 6 panels and all use a combination of fabric. Ideal for using up small pieces of fabric.
I chose the tailored skirt, its a knee length A-line skirt with pockets and invisible back zipper. There is a contrast fabric at each seam and on the pocket tops.
I had enough fabric to cut the 6 panels and 2 pockets without worrying about pattern matching. Honestly I think the only people who will notice and mind I have not pattern matched are other sewist, a small number.
The facing and inner pockets I cut from the contrast fabric.
I cut a size medium, the finished skirt sits comfortable below my belly button. I made no alterations to the pattern, the finished waist measures 32 inches. I did not see listed any finished measurement and for me 2 inches wearing ease on a skirt is a lot. Now that I know how it fits next time I will use a wider seam allowance to eliminate some of the ease. For the zipper, instructions are given to install an invisible zipper using a regular zipper foot. Handy if you don't own an invisible zipper foot.
This skirt came together nicely all the pieces aligned exactly. The instructions are well written and easy  to follow as long as you don't mind flipping back and forth to all the different steps sections, the skirt instructions are on page 40, general skirt instructions on page 30 and zipper instructions on page 22.  The nice thing about this book is  all the included pattern pieces are full size. There are 6 variations on the skirt pattern . Also included in the book is a dress and jacket pattern with 6 variations each.  Patterns are graded from  XXS to XXL.
Sew Serendipity by Kay Whitt retails for $27.99. I got my copy from amazon for $9.99.

Work in Progress

National sewing month starts today in the USA. I will be working on a half square triangle quilt top.
One morning last week I woke inspired to make a HST quilt. For three hours I picked fabrics from my collection and cut 5.5 inch squares. Then, doubt stepped in questioning the madness. This is my 3rd large sized quilt and the first using HST. There is a lot of cutting and accurate sewing involved, successfully matching seams and points, also lots of pressing. Now I have a pile of 5.5 squares sitting on my desk, I put my doubts aside and continue...
My goal is to make a quilt large enough for a single bed. I calculate that I need a total of 234 squares. The quilt is to have 18 rows with 13 squares in each row. I am using 10 different fabrics.
As of this morning I have pieced four rows.

Good for the Environment

The other day at the bookshop I bought a couple of books. The cashier put the books in a small plastic bag and handed it to me. At home I removed the books from the bag and placed the plastic bag in the recycle bin. So wasteful however with a reusable bag with me it is almost unnecessary. That's why I like this tote project. The bag folds into itself and its lightweight enough that I can carry it in my regular handbag all the time.
Recycling is wonderful however its even better for the environment when I don't have anything to recycle after a shopping trip.
Do you agree?
Fabric-Main fabric left over from the Daisy dress, stretch cotton poplin and quilting cotton scraps.
Pattern- Shopping bag from issue 29 of Simply Sewing.
Hardware- Cord stop by Dritz, cord recycled from boys swimmers.

Here is the first shopping bag tote I made.

Pineapple Block

This week I participated in the Pineapple Smoothie Block Sew Along, the pineapple block was designed by Heather from The Sewing Loft. Heather offers two options for making up the pineapple. I chose option 1(the easy one) less cutting and stitching. My pineapple is a little wonky but I am happy with it.

New Slippers

 I made a new pair of slippers this week to replace the first pair I made last year. Again I followed the same pattern instructions as before and used more of my scrap fabric (yeah!,  I am on a mission to reduce my fabric scrap pile to nothing).
To make then safer to wear on floorboards I added anti-skid gripper fabric (the stuff on kids pyjama feet) to the soles. The soles of my first pair were felt and it was easy to slide in them across the room, the anti-skid fabric should give a little traction to prevent falls.